Facebook tweaks news feed to give more prominence to updates from friends

New Delhi: In yet another change to the way users will be greeted when they log in the site, Facebook has tweaked its algorithm for news feed that will now generate a balanced content from friends and pages that a user likes or subscribes to.

Since there will always be a difference in the way one user prefers content to be reflected on the news feed than others, Facebook is improving the experience for people who don't have a lot of content available to see. A major update is that it has relaxed its rule of not showing multiple posts from same source, which essentially means you might be able to see more posts from your favourite pages so that you stay hooked onto the news feed.

The social networking giant notes in its media blog that referral traffic to media publishers from Facebook has more than doubled in the past 18 months and the latest tweaks to the news feed as part of its ways at optimizing how content is discovered and consumed.

The second update to the news feed won't let you miss out on important updates from your friends. It is aimed at those who have many connections on the site and have a lot of content to see each day. With the latest tweak, Facebook will ensure that content posted directly by friends you care about, such as photos, videos, status updates or links, will be higher up in News Feed so that you don't miss it out.

If you like to read news or interact with posts from pages you care about, you will still see that content in News Feed. This update tries to make the balance of content the right one for each individual person.

Apart from the above mentioned updates, a third update is sure to set a lot of Facebook users at ease who have been troubled by the constant updates of their friends liking or commenting on a post. Facebook will now push these stories lower in the feed or hide them all so that more relevant and balanced content is shown to you.

To those who own a page, these changes could impact the referral traffic. However, Facebook has suggested that one must continue to post things that people find meaningful and consider these best practices for driving referral traffic.