11 ms·

Facebook's News Feed

72 points by jeo1234 10y ago

avree 10y ago
One thing I've noticed (and I don't have any hard data for this, just anecdotal evidence) is that the rate of my friends sharing memories on Facebook has dropped a lot. It seems like more and more people are going to other networks/sites to share, and Facebook not so much. Messaging and communication is still going strong, but posting photos and stuff not so much. These changes, plus the features I've noticed lately that push up "your past memories" or "friendship anniversaries" certainly seem to be an attempt to get people posting more again, and remind them that what Facebook wants them to do is make this their 'social database'.
- 5555624 10y ago
  Maybe it's a cultural thing. While I don't have a Facebook account, but a close friend has an account where a bunch of her friends are from the Philippines. Her friends in the U.S. don't seem to share much, other than an occasional funny picture; while those from the Philippines share what they are doing all the time. (She's from the U.S. and has never been to the Philippines.)
  - avree 10y ago
    Interesting. My friends in the Philippines also are among the most frequent sharers on my News Feed as well!
    - mercer 10y ago
      Could it be that there's a progression to an individual's social media use that is somewhat separate from age? As in, many people in the West have been using social media for a long time and now don't care for it it as much, or are more particular in their use, while in the Philippines it's a relatively new phenomenon across age-groups? That's assuming that social media use is newer in the Philippines, of course. I have no clue if that's actually the case. I remember a time that everyone was on this whole 'chat thing' via IRC (some), ICQ, and whatnot. You chatted with strangers and friends alike; chat was the goal itself. In later years of high school this died down and we mostly used chat apps (in particular MSN Messenger) to actually get stuff done. Chat was just the tool. Now at this same time, internet had just become a big thing in Albania, and I remember people from all ages doing what I'd been doing in my early teens: random chats with people from around the world, just for the sake of it. The only difference was that they did it in internet cafés while I always had a home computer. Conversations with a number of people from Eastern Europe give me the same impression: regardless of age, they went through a 'chat phase' significantly later than those in Holland.
      - h8er4fun 10y ago
        When was the 'chat phase' in the Netherlands? It feels like that this chatting ended about 8 years ago in my Easter Europe country
  - hurricaneSlider 10y ago
    Maybe it is because of workplace and hiring culture. Perhaps the states weights social media higher in their hiring decisions and hence people are more reluctant to express themselves in fear that this might cost them a future job
    - drusepth 10y ago
      I've always held the mindset, "If a company doesn't want to hire me for me being me, I don't want to work at that company," which obviously only works well when you have ample opportunities to select from during job searches. If there is a correlation between people posting less and fear of being rejected from future jobs, I wonder if Facebook will see more posting as the job market continues to improve (and vice versa). Would be interesting to plot out.
compactmani 10y ago
I see the optimization problem they face. Promote non-personal content to generate short term revenue versus promote personal content to minimize long-term churn. It looks like their data scientists and business analysts have identified significant risk to pursuing the former and advocate the latter, for now. In other words this has nothing to do with a return to claimed core values, but a shift in strategy to remain afloat for as long as possible.
- tajen 10y ago
  Everyone props up "Growth Hacking" when what we need is product managers who have a feeling of how to please customers on the long term.
- aleem 10y ago
  The real problem is a post IPO Facebook and its obligation to make money. Intimacy isn't profitable and there is no money in sharing personal photos. Publisher content has money but FB risks becoming a feed of useless updates and viral fluff. Within this space, text is a poor revenue generator but video has the highest CPM so we are seeing a major shift to video. FB's $50mn payouts to BuzzFeed and the like shows their commitment to viral junk. The watermelon live video gimmick isn't long term sustainable. FB is losing the plot it seems. There was a time when people used to post pics of things they ate and do FB checkins everywhere they went. It got people on board but other than on-boarding it proved to be just a fad. I imagine the long term strategy will be to selectively optimize feeds based on user prefs. Not everyone values intimacy and some people prefer BuzzFeed cruft on a daily basis. Unfortunately intimacy is hard to measure while sharing and content generation makes for easy KPIs for exec to focus on. Focusing on these will treat the symptoms but not the cause. In fact if sharing and recirculation is a KPI then FB will increasingly gravitate toward Twitter. However this is all backwards. Monetizing the users is a piss poor business model. It fucks up the UX and alienates the users. FB should move to other avenues. Personalized search or ecommerce or premium SMB accounts should be the bigger focus. Aside, their move into messaging reminds me of Microsoft's play when they leveraged Hotmail users into MSN and virtually overnight, uprooted ICQ/AOL.
  - 10y ago
eknkc 10y ago
This might be just me but, On facebook 'friend' mostly means someone you met once, your colleagues or those people you went to high school with and lost connection etc. Also, even at the age of 35, I feel I have some "uncool" family connections there. I can't image what it's like for teenagers. Facebook friendships don't mean anything for most of the people. Therefore, I don't want to see their babies taking their first steps. I just don't care. Those who I care, I follow on other platforms actually. Not sure how this will play out.
- yeukhon 10y ago
  I hate to say, so why don't you remove them from your friend list if you don't care? Why have a stranger on your list? The "met once and I add you to FB" is kind of weird. I keep my FB to people I have good relationship now and in the past but may be not actively talking to each other. That's okay, because occasionally we would comment on each other's latest update. Have a positive attitude toward using FB.
  - eknkc 10y ago
    Because mostly, I don't care that much at this point. Facebook is "that thing" now. I'm not sure but I guess this was what they encouraged? I remember going to places and meeting people, they'd pull up their phone and add you as facebook friends. And you'd accept. Not anymore though. Also, on the UX front; "unfriend" is a pretty strong word. Just leaves a bad taste when you want to click on it :). And unfollow stuff came out so late that the train had already passed.
    - sdoering 10y ago
      I did that regularly. Twice per year I pruned my FB lists. Nowadays I have but 25% of max. friend-count left. That for me works much better. Non the less does FB loose more and more appeal to me. Trivial BS being shoved down my throat is just not valuable to me.
    - RichieAHB 10y ago
      I feel like unfollow / hide is perfect for this. I realise that in an ideal world us humans wouldn't click a button and we'd get the prefect endorphin-releasing content 24/7 but at the moment we have to make a bit of a conscious effort and use the tools we are afforded to make the experience better. If you enjoy Facebook and want to keep in contact with "aquaintances" just spend 20 mins unfollowing and you'll find Facebook is a much nicer place!
harel 10y ago
I started seeing an unreasonable amount of friend's page likes as little page ads. A lot of those, in close succession. Not sure that is what they had in mind.
walterbell 10y ago
> ... in deciding to prioritize one kind of post over another for reasons that seem to have little to do with what individuals are asking for, Facebook is once again confusing its users. Has Facebook (or media or academia) publicly asked users how they want posts to be prioritized? This data would inform investors, management and algorithms.
- gkoberger 10y ago
  Do you remember the backlash when they added the newsfeed in the first place? The public has a very bad track record when it comes to knowing what they want from Facebook.
  - walterbell 10y ago
    > ... the public has a bad track record of knowing what they want .. For products that don't yet exist, this is often true. For products that are used daily, this is less clear. Facebook is now backtracking because user behavior has changed, possibly because user needs/wants have changed.
- denzil_correa 10y ago
  Playing the devil's advocate here - people may not always know what they want.
msoad 10y ago
A lot of us are thinking Facebook made this decision without any research and AB testing. I belive a change this big had to prove it's usefulness I pilot runs before going public. Maybe we will share more I'm Facebook after this change is in effect. By we I mean Facebook uses. Hacker news crowd of course is a very small and unusual niche of Facebook users.
hackathonguy 10y ago
The way I see it, Facebook's newsfeed has already penalized organic reach so severely it doesn't really doesn't provide a strong growth channel for small businesses any more. Nowadays, Pages are better used to communicate with existing customers by distributing content to a highly engaged, much smaller audience (which would still see your posts in their newsfeed). [0] https://blog.yalabot.com/facebooks-changing-the-newsfeed-algorithm-and-it-really-doesn-t-matter-2c2461df8a30#.7ybp6dgnq https://blog.yalabot.com/facebooks-changing-the-newsfeed-alg...
- samsolomon 10y ago
  This was what killed my engagement of Facebook. There were tons of small project pages that I used to follow—small musicians, local artists, podcasts. When Facebook removed organic reach for pages, I stopped seeing updates from these groups. Where I once got updates from interesting projects, I started getting Buzzfeed listicles, car ads and other garbage I didn't care about. I'm sure they made a ton of money, but it destroyed the product for me.
- type0 10y ago
  > Pages are better used to communicate with existing customers by distributing content ... I don't like this trend, more and more service oriented companies moving their support to facebook platform. As a customer who is not on facebok I get less attention from their support staff, this makes me reevaluate such companies and for the most part abandon their services. I'm talking about smaller telcos and such, but I'm noticing that even bigger companies starting to do this thing: "contact us on facebook to get help". Don't they realize that they alienate a proportion of their customers? It seems that they don't care and that's really is the issue here.
  - rdiddly 10y ago
    "If your company's web presence is MySpace, your company doesn't have a web presence," said someone smart 10 years ago.
- SolarUpNote 10y ago
  That's what I don't understand either. It's already the case that news isn't shown to a lot of people unless it gets a lot of engagement. What's different? Is Facebook now saying that it won't show the posts of publishers, even if people are liking/sharing/commenting?
socialleaf 10y ago
Facebook weighs'share' more than anything else which I don't think is cool. I personally might not want to share a post or anything but it shouldn't mean I don't like it. Yes, interaction is crucial but narrowing it down to just sharing isn't a good measure. The official explanation by facebook seems to hint at providing monetary benefit to the company by playing on business' money. It seems facebook is running out of funds and is coining out ways to weed out more money from businesses. Thoughts?
CoolGuySteve 10y ago
I'm always annoyed at Facebook's definition of "news" being about babies, marriages, etc. Just like listening to someone talk about their kids in real life, I just don't really care. On the other hand, I do like the articles and commentary people post for the most part. It's more interesting to know my friends opinions than some Reddit stranger's. Those article discussions are more like what I talk about when I'm out with friends than the babies and vacations the Facebook news feed wants to focus on. In psychology, memory is divided into autobiographical and semantic. I think Facebook "news" needs to be split into the same categories as well. As in having a 'news feed' that updates you on everyone's life, and an 'issues feed' where you can talk with your friends about what's going on in the world.
- exstudent2 10y ago
  > I'm always annoyed at Facebook's definition of "news" being about babies, marriages, etc. Just like listening to someone talk about their kids in real life, I just don't really care. While many of us may be annoyed by this content, the vast majority of people are not and in fact seek it out.
- APock 10y ago
  Facebook really wants to display that kind of content because it triggers positivity on most people,getting you to comment and like said post,thus making your comment get likes and so on.. feeding you positive engagement in the process, so you don't stop using Facebook.
  - tdkl 10y ago
    Funny, because I saw the exact opposite happening when the majority of people came to FB in my country around 2009. It's like almost like YouTube and those people don't even mind they're writing those rants under their name.
hliyan 10y ago
There's only so much you can innovate with a reverse chronological list of content. After a while one starts revisiting old territory. Perhaps Facebook needs to start thinking about alternative presentation formats?
- sparkzilla 10y ago
  There are ways to do it, but I can't say more...
  - welanes 10y ago
    C'mon, tell us the secret. We won't tell anybody.
- drusepth 10y ago
  One can only hope they'll do exciting things with their Oculus acquisition, both in and outside of the gaming market.
- billmalarky 10y ago
  Well that's sort of the idea with the "trending news" etc but to make that the focus of the content would be abandoning what makes facebook, well, facebook. It would be making it more like reddit/twitter.
otec 10y ago
I don't have a Facebook, don't have this problem.
paulpauper 10y ago
I imagine the best solution is to stop using the Facebook news feed. There are better way to get information . I had no idea people still regularly check their Facebook
- crummy 10y ago
  where did you think all the comments and likes came from?
- bogomipz 10y ago
  I keep hearing this sentiment and it reminds me of the Yogi Bera quote "Nobody goes there any more. It's too crowded." People keep talking about how "over" FB is yet every time I'm in line somewhere and I glance at people's phones in front of me I see they are scrolling through FB.
- jamesjyu 10y ago
  One in seven people on this planet use FB every day. http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/ http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/
quadrangle 10y ago
I go on Facebook for the sole purpose of posting anti-Facebook news articles and related items. I do sometimes engage with other crap when I'm there, but the majority of the occasions it's a waste of time.
danso 10y ago
I wonder if the author (Om Malik) has revised his thinking on a related matter: http://om.co/2016/04/25/should-you-publish-on-facebook-first/ http://om.co/2016/04/25/should-you-publish-on-facebook-first... > My parting comment (which he included in the final piece) was that if I were to start a publication, it would be on Facebook (perhaps as a Facebook page). Today I learned that Vox Media is going to launch Circuit Breaker, a gadget blog, as a Facebook-only publication. (It will also have it as a section of The Verge on the web. I call this a web-based backup/archive.) > Despite hand-wringing by traditonalists, I believe Vox’s decision is bold and the right one: In the post-browser-only world, it makes perfect sense to go where the audience lives. I am not clear how well it will monetize this effort. After all, Facebook is a selfish partner when it comes to monetization. At least The Verge/Vox is savvy enough to manage a workflow that pushes to both Facebook and the Web...but I imagine prioritizing FB means doing much less A/B testing and other optimizations that are needed to create a refined Web product.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ryanmarsh 10y ago
Before I deleted my Facebook account the first time I had ~> 2,000 friends. These were all people who knew me or of me, mainly from my community. My wife has topped out well above that. She still uses it. You might think going from 2000 friends to zero Facebook would be a big social change. It wasn't really. Beyond about 10 friends (well below whatshisnames number) Facebook didn't increase its social value to me. At 2,000 it was just a time waste. I don't really need to know what is happening in the lives of so many people. My real tribe isn't that big. Facebook didn't deepen my relationships either. It didn't enrich my life. I got back on about two years ago and added plenty of people. By then Facebook had become this kind of Twitter for idiots/drudge report/unmoderated Reddit/MySpace so I deleted it. I recently created an account (my third) and I think I have about 5 friends on there. I added them mainly because a real friend died. It's not a great experience. My feed is full of stuff friends liked and stuff I don't understand why Facebook thinks is relevant to me. Facebook's land grab worked. They're huge but their product makes me feel like I walked into a dirty gas station bathroom. Maybe I'm naive but couldn't a product that deepens relationships (quality not quantity) be a more stable long term business?
- jfernandez 10y ago
  I think this was a big premise of Path, but it didn't pan out to well (I guess technically it's "hasn't panned out" since it is still around). I agree it's likely a stronger product, but not a strong or even equal business.
- danso 10y ago
  What content are your 5 friends posting that you believe FB's newsfeed is leaving out? I've mostly limited my FB to my HS and college friends, and a few work friends. It's a nice nostalgic oasis from the things I see on Twitter, because on Twitter I follow just about anyone who is in the same field as me, whether or not I personally know them.
  - ryanmarsh 10y ago
    It's not what's left out it's what's put in. Every time one of my ex-mil friends or family members likes some narrow minded but slightly amusing meme I don't need to be notified of it.

72 points by jeo1234 10y ago

avree 10y ago

One thing I've noticed (and I don't have any hard data for this, just anecdotal evidence) is that the rate of my friends sharing memories on Facebook has dropped a lot. It seems like more and more people are going to other networks/sites to share, and Facebook not so much. Messaging and communication is still going strong, but posting photos and stuff not so much. These changes, plus the features I've noticed lately that push up "your past memories" or "friendship anniversaries" certainly seem to be an attempt to get people posting more again, and remind them that what Facebook wants them to do is make this their 'social database'.

5555624 10y ago
Maybe it's a cultural thing. While I don't have a Facebook account, but a close friend has an account where a bunch of her friends are from the Philippines. Her friends in the U.S. don't seem to share much, other than an occasional funny picture; while those from the Philippines share what they are doing all the time. (She's from the U.S. and has never been to the Philippines.)
- avree 10y ago
  Interesting. My friends in the Philippines also are among the most frequent sharers on my News Feed as well!
  - mercer 10y ago
    Could it be that there's a progression to an individual's social media use that is somewhat separate from age? As in, many people in the West have been using social media for a long time and now don't care for it it as much, or are more particular in their use, while in the Philippines it's a relatively new phenomenon across age-groups? That's assuming that social media use is newer in the Philippines, of course. I have no clue if that's actually the case. I remember a time that everyone was on this whole 'chat thing' via IRC (some), ICQ, and whatnot. You chatted with strangers and friends alike; chat was the goal itself. In later years of high school this died down and we mostly used chat apps (in particular MSN Messenger) to actually get stuff done. Chat was just the tool. Now at this same time, internet had just become a big thing in Albania, and I remember people from all ages doing what I'd been doing in my early teens: random chats with people from around the world, just for the sake of it. The only difference was that they did it in internet cafés while I always had a home computer. Conversations with a number of people from Eastern Europe give me the same impression: regardless of age, they went through a 'chat phase' significantly later than those in Holland.
    - h8er4fun 10y ago
      When was the 'chat phase' in the Netherlands? It feels like that this chatting ended about 8 years ago in my Easter Europe country
- hurricaneSlider 10y ago
  Maybe it is because of workplace and hiring culture. Perhaps the states weights social media higher in their hiring decisions and hence people are more reluctant to express themselves in fear that this might cost them a future job
  - drusepth 10y ago
    I've always held the mindset, "If a company doesn't want to hire me for me being me, I don't want to work at that company," which obviously only works well when you have ample opportunities to select from during job searches. If there is a correlation between people posting less and fear of being rejected from future jobs, I wonder if Facebook will see more posting as the job market continues to improve (and vice versa). Would be interesting to plot out.

compactmani 10y ago

I see the optimization problem they face. Promote non-personal content to generate short term revenue versus promote personal content to minimize long-term churn. It looks like their data scientists and business analysts have identified significant risk to pursuing the former and advocate the latter, for now. In other words this has nothing to do with a return to claimed core values, but a shift in strategy to remain afloat for as long as possible.

tajen 10y ago
Everyone props up "Growth Hacking" when what we need is product managers who have a feeling of how to please customers on the long term.
aleem 10y ago
The real problem is a post IPO Facebook and its obligation to make money. Intimacy isn't profitable and there is no money in sharing personal photos. Publisher content has money but FB risks becoming a feed of useless updates and viral fluff. Within this space, text is a poor revenue generator but video has the highest CPM so we are seeing a major shift to video. FB's $50mn payouts to BuzzFeed and the like shows their commitment to viral junk. The watermelon live video gimmick isn't long term sustainable. FB is losing the plot it seems. There was a time when people used to post pics of things they ate and do FB checkins everywhere they went. It got people on board but other than on-boarding it proved to be just a fad. I imagine the long term strategy will be to selectively optimize feeds based on user prefs. Not everyone values intimacy and some people prefer BuzzFeed cruft on a daily basis. Unfortunately intimacy is hard to measure while sharing and content generation makes for easy KPIs for exec to focus on. Focusing on these will treat the symptoms but not the cause. In fact if sharing and recirculation is a KPI then FB will increasingly gravitate toward Twitter. However this is all backwards. Monetizing the users is a piss poor business model. It fucks up the UX and alienates the users. FB should move to other avenues. Personalized search or ecommerce or premium SMB accounts should be the bigger focus. Aside, their move into messaging reminds me of Microsoft's play when they leveraged Hotmail users into MSN and virtually overnight, uprooted ICQ/AOL.
- 10y ago

eknkc 10y ago

This might be just me but, On facebook 'friend' mostly means someone you met once, your colleagues or those people you went to high school with and lost connection etc. Also, even at the age of 35, I feel I have some "uncool" family connections there. I can't image what it's like for teenagers. Facebook friendships don't mean anything for most of the people. Therefore, I don't want to see their babies taking their first steps. I just don't care. Those who I care, I follow on other platforms actually. Not sure how this will play out.

yeukhon 10y ago
I hate to say, so why don't you remove them from your friend list if you don't care? Why have a stranger on your list? The "met once and I add you to FB" is kind of weird. I keep my FB to people I have good relationship now and in the past but may be not actively talking to each other. That's okay, because occasionally we would comment on each other's latest update. Have a positive attitude toward using FB.
- eknkc 10y ago
  Because mostly, I don't care that much at this point. Facebook is "that thing" now. I'm not sure but I guess this was what they encouraged? I remember going to places and meeting people, they'd pull up their phone and add you as facebook friends. And you'd accept. Not anymore though. Also, on the UX front; "unfriend" is a pretty strong word. Just leaves a bad taste when you want to click on it :). And unfollow stuff came out so late that the train had already passed.
  - sdoering 10y ago
    I did that regularly. Twice per year I pruned my FB lists. Nowadays I have but 25% of max. friend-count left. That for me works much better. Non the less does FB loose more and more appeal to me. Trivial BS being shoved down my throat is just not valuable to me.
  - RichieAHB 10y ago
    I feel like unfollow / hide is perfect for this. I realise that in an ideal world us humans wouldn't click a button and we'd get the prefect endorphin-releasing content 24/7 but at the moment we have to make a bit of a conscious effort and use the tools we are afforded to make the experience better. If you enjoy Facebook and want to keep in contact with "aquaintances" just spend 20 mins unfollowing and you'll find Facebook is a much nicer place!

harel 10y ago

I started seeing an unreasonable amount of friend's page likes as little page ads. A lot of those, in close succession. Not sure that is what they had in mind.

walterbell 10y ago

> ... in deciding to prioritize one kind of post over another for reasons that seem to have little to do with what individuals are asking for, Facebook is once again confusing its users. Has Facebook (or media or academia) publicly asked users how they want posts to be prioritized? This data would inform investors, management and algorithms.

gkoberger 10y ago
Do you remember the backlash when they added the newsfeed in the first place? The public has a very bad track record when it comes to knowing what they want from Facebook.
- walterbell 10y ago
  > ... the public has a bad track record of knowing what they want .. For products that don't yet exist, this is often true. For products that are used daily, this is less clear. Facebook is now backtracking because user behavior has changed, possibly because user needs/wants have changed.
denzil_correa 10y ago
Playing the devil's advocate here - people may not always know what they want.

msoad 10y ago

A lot of us are thinking Facebook made this decision without any research and AB testing. I belive a change this big had to prove it's usefulness I pilot runs before going public. Maybe we will share more I'm Facebook after this change is in effect. By we I mean Facebook uses. Hacker news crowd of course is a very small and unusual niche of Facebook users.

hackathonguy 10y ago

The way I see it, Facebook's newsfeed has already penalized organic reach so severely it doesn't really doesn't provide a strong growth channel for small businesses any more. Nowadays, Pages are better used to communicate with existing customers by distributing content to a highly engaged, much smaller audience (which would still see your posts in their newsfeed). [0] https://blog.yalabot.com/facebooks-changing-the-newsfeed-algorithm-and-it-really-doesn-t-matter-2c2461df8a30#.7ybp6dgnq https://blog.yalabot.com/facebooks-changing-the-newsfeed-alg...

samsolomon 10y ago
This was what killed my engagement of Facebook. There were tons of small project pages that I used to follow—small musicians, local artists, podcasts. When Facebook removed organic reach for pages, I stopped seeing updates from these groups. Where I once got updates from interesting projects, I started getting Buzzfeed listicles, car ads and other garbage I didn't care about. I'm sure they made a ton of money, but it destroyed the product for me.
type0 10y ago
> Pages are better used to communicate with existing customers by distributing content ... I don't like this trend, more and more service oriented companies moving their support to facebook platform. As a customer who is not on facebok I get less attention from their support staff, this makes me reevaluate such companies and for the most part abandon their services. I'm talking about smaller telcos and such, but I'm noticing that even bigger companies starting to do this thing: "contact us on facebook to get help". Don't they realize that they alienate a proportion of their customers? It seems that they don't care and that's really is the issue here.
- rdiddly 10y ago
  "If your company's web presence is MySpace, your company doesn't have a web presence," said someone smart 10 years ago.
SolarUpNote 10y ago
That's what I don't understand either. It's already the case that news isn't shown to a lot of people unless it gets a lot of engagement. What's different? Is Facebook now saying that it won't show the posts of publishers, even if people are liking/sharing/commenting?

socialleaf 10y ago

Facebook weighs'share' more than anything else which I don't think is cool. I personally might not want to share a post or anything but it shouldn't mean I don't like it. Yes, interaction is crucial but narrowing it down to just sharing isn't a good measure. The official explanation by facebook seems to hint at providing monetary benefit to the company by playing on business' money. It seems facebook is running out of funds and is coining out ways to weed out more money from businesses. Thoughts?

CoolGuySteve 10y ago

I'm always annoyed at Facebook's definition of "news" being about babies, marriages, etc. Just like listening to someone talk about their kids in real life, I just don't really care. On the other hand, I do like the articles and commentary people post for the most part. It's more interesting to know my friends opinions than some Reddit stranger's. Those article discussions are more like what I talk about when I'm out with friends than the babies and vacations the Facebook news feed wants to focus on. In psychology, memory is divided into autobiographical and semantic. I think Facebook "news" needs to be split into the same categories as well. As in having a 'news feed' that updates you on everyone's life, and an 'issues feed' where you can talk with your friends about what's going on in the world.

exstudent2 10y ago
> I'm always annoyed at Facebook's definition of "news" being about babies, marriages, etc. Just like listening to someone talk about their kids in real life, I just don't really care. While many of us may be annoyed by this content, the vast majority of people are not and in fact seek it out.
APock 10y ago
Facebook really wants to display that kind of content because it triggers positivity on most people,getting you to comment and like said post,thus making your comment get likes and so on.. feeding you positive engagement in the process, so you don't stop using Facebook.
- tdkl 10y ago
  Funny, because I saw the exact opposite happening when the majority of people came to FB in my country around 2009. It's like almost like YouTube and those people don't even mind they're writing those rants under their name.

hliyan 10y ago

There's only so much you can innovate with a reverse chronological list of content. After a while one starts revisiting old territory. Perhaps Facebook needs to start thinking about alternative presentation formats?

sparkzilla 10y ago
There are ways to do it, but I can't say more...
- welanes 10y ago
  C'mon, tell us the secret. We won't tell anybody.
drusepth 10y ago
One can only hope they'll do exciting things with their Oculus acquisition, both in and outside of the gaming market.
billmalarky 10y ago
Well that's sort of the idea with the "trending news" etc but to make that the focus of the content would be abandoning what makes facebook, well, facebook. It would be making it more like reddit/twitter.

otec 10y ago

I don't have a Facebook, don't have this problem.

paulpauper 10y ago

I imagine the best solution is to stop using the Facebook news feed. There are better way to get information . I had no idea people still regularly check their Facebook

crummy 10y ago
where did you think all the comments and likes came from?
bogomipz 10y ago
I keep hearing this sentiment and it reminds me of the Yogi Bera quote "Nobody goes there any more. It's too crowded." People keep talking about how "over" FB is yet every time I'm in line somewhere and I glance at people's phones in front of me I see they are scrolling through FB.
jamesjyu 10y ago
One in seven people on this planet use FB every day. http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/ http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/

quadrangle 10y ago

I go on Facebook for the sole purpose of posting anti-Facebook news articles and related items. I do sometimes engage with other crap when I'm there, but the majority of the occasions it's a waste of time.

danso 10y ago

I wonder if the author (Om Malik) has revised his thinking on a related matter: http://om.co/2016/04/25/should-you-publish-on-facebook-first/ http://om.co/2016/04/25/should-you-publish-on-facebook-first... > My parting comment (which he included in the final piece) was that if I were to start a publication, it would be on Facebook (perhaps as a Facebook page). Today I learned that Vox Media is going to launch Circuit Breaker, a gadget blog, as a Facebook-only publication. (It will also have it as a section of The Verge on the web. I call this a web-based backup/archive.) > Despite hand-wringing by traditonalists, I believe Vox’s decision is bold and the right one: In the post-browser-only world, it makes perfect sense to go where the audience lives. I am not clear how well it will monetize this effort. After all, Facebook is a selfish partner when it comes to monetization. At least The Verge/Vox is savvy enough to manage a workflow that pushes to both Facebook and the Web...but I imagine prioritizing FB means doing much less A/B testing and other optimizations that are needed to create a refined Web product.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ryanmarsh 10y ago

Before I deleted my Facebook account the first time I had ~> 2,000 friends. These were all people who knew me or of me, mainly from my community. My wife has topped out well above that. She still uses it. You might think going from 2000 friends to zero Facebook would be a big social change. It wasn't really. Beyond about 10 friends (well below whatshisnames number) Facebook didn't increase its social value to me. At 2,000 it was just a time waste. I don't really need to know what is happening in the lives of so many people. My real tribe isn't that big. Facebook didn't deepen my relationships either. It didn't enrich my life. I got back on about two years ago and added plenty of people. By then Facebook had become this kind of Twitter for idiots/drudge report/unmoderated Reddit/MySpace so I deleted it. I recently created an account (my third) and I think I have about 5 friends on there. I added them mainly because a real friend died. It's not a great experience. My feed is full of stuff friends liked and stuff I don't understand why Facebook thinks is relevant to me. Facebook's land grab worked. They're huge but their product makes me feel like I walked into a dirty gas station bathroom. Maybe I'm naive but couldn't a product that deepens relationships (quality not quantity) be a more stable long term business?

jfernandez 10y ago
I think this was a big premise of Path, but it didn't pan out to well (I guess technically it's "hasn't panned out" since it is still around). I agree it's likely a stronger product, but not a strong or even equal business.
danso 10y ago
What content are your 5 friends posting that you believe FB's newsfeed is leaving out? I've mostly limited my FB to my HS and college friends, and a few work friends. It's a nice nostalgic oasis from the things I see on Twitter, because on Twitter I follow just about anyone who is in the same field as me, whether or not I personally know them.
- ryanmarsh 10y ago
  It's not what's left out it's what's put in. Every time one of my ex-mil friends or family members likes some narrow minded but slightly amusing meme I don't need to be notified of it.