Facebook News Feed Algorithm to Factor in Time Spent on Posts

The latest tweak to Facebook’s News Feed algorithm factors in predictions of how long users will spend on articles (or Instant Articles) after clicking on them.

The latest tweak to Facebook’s News Feed algorithm factors in predictions of how long users will spend on articles (or Instant Articles) after clicking on them.

Software engineer Moshe Blank and research scientist Jie Xu also said in a Newsroom post that the social network will attempt to reduce the number of consecutive posts from the same sources in users’ News Feeds.

Blank and Xu said the algorithm change has begun rolling out “and will continue over the coming weeks,” adding that while some pages may see small increases in referral traffic and some may see minor decreases, they anticipated no significant changes for most pages.

They wrote:

We’re learning that the time people choose to spend reading or watching content they clicked on from News Feed is an important signal that the story was interesting to them.

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