Facebook changes News Feed algorithm to reflect video usage

Increasing numbers of Facebook users are watching video, so the company announced today new ways of making sure that users see the videos most relevant to them. Facebook notes that video viewership has doubled in the past six months.

A video’s weight in the News Feed algorithm will now take into consideration how long a user has watched a video, in addition to number of views and engagement metrics such as likes, comments and shares. People who watch more videos should see more in the future, and those who scroll past videos will likely see fewer videos.

Facebook explained the new ranking guidelines for videos in a blog post:

The improvement we are making today considers whether someone has watched a video and for how long they watched it.