Big changes on the way for your Facebook News Feed

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You may have seen (or may not have, it’s cool) our published article yesterday on the social media companies that Americans want to “keep” or “kill.”

If you didn’t, here it is: America’s favorite, and least favorite, social media platforms

Facebook received a comparatively high, positive “keep” rate, at 64%, but also found that 32% want to “kill” them and hope they die.

Now, big changes are afoot for the social media giant’s (still the largest platform of them all, with 2 billion users) most prominent feature: the News Feed.

Well, maybe not that big. Or shouldn’t really be considered as such. Facebook is more or less reverting back to what they were originally built for: A platform for friends new and old (+ family, etc. People in general, instead of brands and companies) to connect.

As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post published yesterday on, of course, Facebook: “We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us… But recently we’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content — posts from businesses, brands, and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.”

Facebook will now be giving priority to posts that “…inspire back-and-forth discussion in the comments and posts that you might want to share and react to.” Company Head of News Feed Adam Mosseri said in a post of his own.

The full explanation of changes can be found in the following video:

By design, you’ll be seeing a lot more of what your “friends” are up to; the things they’re talking (writing) about, the recommendations they need, the places they’re going, and the things they “like” and, more importantly, the things that they share.

Anything that Facebook thinks (or Facebook’s algorithm thinks) will “spark conversation.”

Whether this will keep Facebook in its user’s general favor, or if people will simply find out how many on their “Friends” list they don’t actually like, and don’t want to see posts from, we’ll find out soon enough.

This does differ significantly from Facebook’s last attempt at a major change in its News Feed: When they moved Page content over to the “Explore” tab, forcing companies to pay to have content featured in the News Feed.

With this change you will still see company/business/corporate Page content, just considerably less of it.