
Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family - peterkshultz
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/technology/facebook-to-change-news-feed-to-focus-on-friends-and-family.html
======
sharkweek
As someone who runs a niche news site, it's hard to see the point focusing on
running a Facebook page anymore. We kind of go through the motions to keep up
with appearances, but Facebook is less than 5% of our total overall traffic,
and 95% of that portion is all from individuals sharing our content, not from
our page directly.

It's just impossible to "bid" on traffic via Facebook and win out over
companies that have far bigger budgets, and most importantly feel that
eyeballs are far more valuable. A visitor landing on one of our news stories
likely is worth less than a few cents. A visitor to a consumer retail site
could easily be worth hundreds of dollars. Guess who has the budget to bid big
on traffic acquisition here.

There isn't _that_ much real estate for advertisers on FB, and with that it
has become incredibly expensive for a media company to grow a legit audience
through FB anymore as well.

As a regular FB user though, I think this is an interesting move. I stopped
using it to see what my friends are up to long ago as everyone moved to
Instagram and Snapchat for their daily happenings. Facebook became a news
aggregation service for me, much like Twitter. Might just be my friends, but
only a handful are active on the service much anymore with daily updates.

~~~
mrweasel
Generally speaking businesses doesn't have to be on Facebook. It was cool and
all when Facebook was the new hotness, but at this point it's wasted energi.

The whole idea that "users will engage with your business via Facebook (or any
other social media)" is pretty much snake oil. Facebook engages your customer
if they can win a price, or they want to complain, loudly and in public.
Neither of these things helps your business.

Assuming no click baiting, I would like to see an honest business that could
not function, if they where not on Facebook.

The only change I would like to see in the Facebook news feed is the ability
to remember that I just want everything sorted by newest first. Perhaps simply
the ability to disable "curated feed". My feed is already curated, by me.

~~~
stdbrouw
Check out the Facebook pages of mom and pop stores, grocers and other local
businesses in your area. Chances are you'll see a lot of interaction with
loyal customers. Check out the Facebook pages of your favorite musicians, lots
of interaction there too. It's not because you don't see it that it doesn't
exist.

~~~
mrweasel
For very local or niche businesses I would say you're right. It's much easier,
and cheaper for them and their customer to just maintain a Facebook page,
rather than trying to build a website. I don't see a way for Facebook making
money of these companies though. It's the companies that bring the audience to
Facebook in this case, not the other way around. Facebook in these cases are
just a glorified mailing lists.

For mainstream businesses, like chain supermarket, Coca Cola and car makers, I
still maintain it's wasted effort.

~~~
Ralfp
> For mainstream businesses, like chain supermarket, Coca Cola and car makers,
> I still maintain it's wasted effort.

I'm working at one of top digital advertising agencies in EU. National and
global brands save no buck on their spending on social media presence, and
there are plenty of cheap (for them) tricks that result in both additional
sales, positive PR and new customers. We also have strong data to back this up
and justify our budgets.

Sometimes it costs real peanuts. Its easy to pump sales for soda brand by
going to Snapchat with staged clip going "PEOPLE!!! I WANT TO SEE HOW THIS
SODA HELPS YOU BEAR WITH CURRENT HEATS!!!" with people in 13-30 range flocking
back with clips of them demoing how soda helps them out stay cool. Then brand
gifts dozen or two best submissions and next action ran month or two later
attracts 120% the number previous one did, word of gifts and possible response
from social media make sure of that.

Whats in for, say, Lidl (large market store in EU), when it gives away stuff
to guy who complained to them on twitter that he got diarrhea from expired
pizza he bought at their place? It lets them save face, improve recognition of
their brand and makes more people bring their feedback, allowing them find
potential rotten apples within their chain.

For young peopple especially the fact that large brand @'s them on
twitter/face/insta or elsewhere is enough to go nuts, go to store, buy crazy
amount of brand's product and then stage some photo or clip alone or with
friends. And then there are followers who mimic this in hopes of getting
social fame as well.

~~~
mrweasel
I'll assume you're right, because you actually work with this.

A few questions on the Snapchat thing, if you don't mind: Aren't you just
"buying" interaction with the prospect of a potential price? Does it actually
increase sales figures significantly, long term and beyond the people that
participated? Wouldn't the participant have been very likely to buy the
product anyway? I mean they already follow the brand on Snapchat.

~~~
Ralfp
Their participation in activation usually makes some of their
followers/friends to try their chances as well (or just buy it to see whats so
great about it). Those people will try the product themselves and hopefully
some will pick a liking for it and even recommend it further.

Social media is simply new channel in BTL and is important to Brands as they
grow the awareness that there's increasing number of people that's simply
oblivious to ATL.

As for sales figures, we actually work within targets, sometimes esoteric ones
like "get hastag trending on specific day". We also rarely work alone, more
often than not being just part of bigger picture happening simultanously.
Brand then reviews performance using market research companies or sales
figures and tell us results, so its hard to say if sales change would be same
or different without us.

As for long term sales, that depends more on Brand's strategy and its
reception by the market. Digital is part of this strategy's realisation, but
due to nature of the medium, we are playing short game here.

------
dchuk
This is how Facebook operates. Open up the platform until everyone piles on
and basically ruins it, then tighten it back up and start charging those same
people to do what they were previously doing for free.

They did it with games (they became basically spam until they locked it down).
Then when they opened things up to advertising, you could basically run any ad
you want to any offer you want. Then they tightened that down once it got
adoption. And now they're going to lock the news feed back down a bit.

It's interesting how well they've pulled this off without poisoning the well
and alienating their user base.

~~~
NegativeLatency
Personally I've been alienated, and many of my non techie friends have been
too, but the network effect is just too strong and pulls you back in when old-
so-and-so plans their birthday party or whatever.

~~~
itchyouch
That's it. I use it purely for answering invitations to events and a handy
address book. Otherwise my social media time is away from FB, though, I still
spend time on FB in the form of Instagram.

~~~
tyfon
I deleted my FB account several years ago and you'd be surprised how many
actually find my email when they want to invite me for something. If someone
can't be bothered to send me an email I'm not too concerned about going to
their party.

~~~
throwanem
I never had one, and you'd be surprised how many don't. This has caused me to
miss camping trips, parties, dinners, and _weddings_. Of course it's possible
that I'm just such an obnoxious person that nobody wants me around, but if
that were the case, I doubt I'd have received such abject and clearly
heartfelt apologies from people who didn't invite me to things because I
wasn't on their Facebook friends list.

Of course, such apologies always come with the implicit "...but if you don't
get on Facebook, it's going to keep happening." I actually started to create a
Facebook account, but refused to continue past the point where it asked for my
email account credentials in order to construct a friends list from my
correspondents.

Yes, I'm aware that's optional and can be bypassed - but when the relationship
_starts out_ with a boundary test as blatant and extreme as that, I'm really
not interested in hanging around to find out where my new abusive partner is
going to decide to go from there.

So I still don't have a Facebook account. As a direct result of this, I also
don't have a meaningful social life any more, which is a shame, because I
rather enjoyed the one I did have. I'm hardly alone in this. Is it any wonder
there are people who want to kill Facebook with a hatchet?

~~~
bogomipz
Weddings really? That's sad. Using FB to send out wedding invites seems pretty
gauche.

~~~
throwanem
No, using a Facebook friends list as a basis for an invitation list, and
forgetting to add in the couple of people you know who aren't on Facebook
because you haven't noticed that Facebook has become your address book of
record.

It's just not something people think about, and that worries the hell out of
me. We've never before seen a world where a single, rather secretive
corporation, which has already shown itself willing to experiment with its
users' perceptions in order to better serve its own purposes, mediates
practically every interpersonal relationship of a significant fraction of the
species. When I was growing up, that would've been nothing but fodder for
third-rate dystopian sf, and yet here we are.

------
cddotdotslash
I am so tired of seeing "things my friends liked" as essentially my only
stream of posts. The sponsored posts haven't been too bad, but around 80% of
my news feed is "John liked this" (picture of someone I've never met), "Mary
commented on an article" (some stupid comment like an emoji), "Sam reacted to
a photo" (picture posted by Sam's friend of a friend who again, I've never
met). I think in the last week I've seen maybe ten actual posts from friends
and thousands of reactions, likes, etc. that i have no interest in.

~~~
bezaorj
I would really like an option of hiding "things my friends liked". I
constantly click on "Hide this post" to see if the algorithm can learn from
that, but it doesn't happen.

~~~
delecti
Hide the source. "Mary liked this" hide all from HuffPo, "Steve liked this"
hide all from Energy Crystals Whatever, "Joe liked this" hide all from Sue
McWhoever (you've never met her anyway).

My feed is much more manageable since I started hiding just about all the
pages, leaving it pretty much solely picture and text posts of people I know.

~~~
bezaorj
I'd do that, but it would be a battle fought daily, one at a time, against
individual friends of friends you never met... A "Hide all posts from friends
of friends" option would be great but not that interesting for Facebook.

~~~
anthony_romeo
It actually is pretty effective. I went through an unfollowing frenzy a couple
weeks ago and my feed became far less cluttered since. I'm glad Facebook is
making some adjustments, because absent aggressive unfollowing the news feed
became even more of a waste of time than it already was.

------
system16
I guess they need to do something to increase engagement because -
anecdotally, yes - the amount of sharing and engagement in my feed has dropped
dramatically in recent years. A rough guess would be ~3/4 of the content I see
now are just likes/reactions and comments my friends made on other content
(usually articles or memes). I'm sure most of my friends have no idea I'm
seeing this, and if they did they would probably interact with FB even less.
I'm very hesitant to interact with FB at all now, and just do a quick scroll
through every other day.

~~~
Thlom
Yeah. When you are "friends" with your grandmother, boss, Mary from elementary
school and your ex's mother you won't share that much. And those who will
share anything in that kind of environment are the people you don't want to
hear from ...

Yes, you can group your friends and just share with some of them, but who has
time for that?

I'm even hesitant to write anything in semi-open groups as I'm not sure if
what I write will show up on my friends wall. It's not like what I'm writing
is extreme or private, I just don't need it to be actively shared with all my
"friends.

~~~
rdslw
This^100.

It's interesting that facebook got it initially right, and NEVER implemented
'who's viewed your profile/picture' \- as they know that this (possibility of
others seeing our actions) would greatly reduce our actions/viewing (us
fearing it being visible).

WHILE now, they're not getting it right and publish our actions
(likes/comments) like a mad spammer.

It looks like they crossed the border while playing with our curiosity what-
others-do, but forgotten that this means, that our actions need to be revealed
to others also which will make us reluctant the moment we understand
implications.

Snow ball effect to come?

------
Nursie
All I want from facebook is a time-ordered list of everything all my friends
post.

No filtering, no reordering by 'importance', no weighting by how often I
'like' or respond. No "you clicked off the page and back, we're gonna show you
different stuff!".

Just a simple time-ordered list. Apparently this desire is wrong.

~~~
gvurrdon
That, and the ability to conceal my birthday from everyone, would go some way
towards persuading me to use it.

~~~
james_pm
For the birthday thing:

From your Profile page > About tab, then Contact and Basic Info. Click on the
pen icon to edit your birthday and you'll see a dropdown to determine who can
see the date and/or year of your birth. I've got mine set to "Only me".

~~~
gvurrdon
Thanks, I didn't realise that it was possible to hide it; if it is possible to
conceal both date and year then that leaves only the timeline, sinister data
collection and general tediousness as issues.

------
rdslw
It's smoke screen move. FB knows that family and friends emit not enough
content to keep us on FB as long as FB would like to.

This is simply to be able to charge companies more for sneaking their content
into your so-called FriendsAndFamilyAndHighPaidAdContent.

In other news: Tesla can give you any model you want. If you pay.

------
habosa
This might get me to browse a little bit more. I have about 1000 friends on
Facebook but 60℅ of my feed is news from a small group of publishers (ESPN,
The Onion, NYT) and ads.

~~~
cannam
Completely OT and I apologise, but I've just noticed that your "60%" doesn't
use the percent sign but instead ℅, a symbol I'd never seen before that
appears to be the abbreviation for "care of". I'm fascinated by that -- how
did that get there? What kind of keyboard did you use?

~~~
dvh
You don't want to know! [https://xkcd.com/1530/](https://xkcd.com/1530/)

------
danso
Smart move by Facebook...though I say that as someone who, when I want the
news, I use Twitter or HN, or direct visits to newsites. FB is where I go to
keep up with what my friends are doing.

Not so great a move if you're a news publisher who has invested time in
optimizing your reach on Facebook, though...

~~~
yeukhon
Look at the bright side. If people leave facebook because they don't see
friends' and family's photo, but ads and ads and ads, then the number of
active users will decline and facebook will eventually become nothing.

------
jbb555
Most of my "friends" post lots and lots of political annoying rubbish. I hope
it doesn't start showing me more of that,

~~~
Frank2312
If you click the small Arrow in the top right of a post, there are usually
some options to manage that post.

Often, there is "See less of X person", "See less of this kind of post",
"Unfolow X person" and other other similar options.

I use it all the time and ended up with a feed that doesn't change much (maybe
one new post per day, but that contains content I actually care about.

------
igl
That is 10 years overdue and the main reason I closed my account years ago. It
was like looking at a sponsored gawker newsfeed.

Today people do not even mention it anymore. Wether i meet new people or when
i connect with old friends. Facebook disappeared from my life as quickly as it
came in.

Do HN people still use Facebook?

~~~
lmm
Yes. It's still the only decent way to organize a party, group trip to a
museum or anything like that - Meetup costs money, Slack costs money or
requires a dodgy hack, other groupchat programs are too noisy, setting up a
dedicated mailing list or website is too much effort, emails-to-everyone it's
too hard to get everyone to add or remove someone from the list.

I put events on there, occasionally a few holiday photos or whatever, and
check updates on my commute. I defriend people I'm no longer close to, and
hide as much political news as I can, so mainly I see photos, personal-blog-
like posts, and events. It's great for short-notice events - if I see
someone's going to something cool tonight I can ask if they want to meet up.
It's great.

------
mtgx
This is hilarious. Wasn't this supposed to be Facebook's original goal until
they got greedy and started pushing all sorts of other nonsense to a user's
feed? Now they're realizing that that same greed is making them lose users
over the long term. Whoops.

------
exabrial
It was focused on that until they introduced all the features people hate

------
amaks
Pretty straightforward goal like others mentioned - de-prioritize publishers,
get them pay more to promote their posts, prioritize them back. Nothing has
changed, publishers pay more. So much for "focus on Friends and Family".

------
halviti
i.e. - facebook wants to be paid by advertisers instead of being a free
promotion platform.

Really it makes sense all around though, and you have to wonder what took them
so long.

~~~
raverbashing
They are already getting money for ads, I don't know why you think they aren't

~~~
grenoire
Free promotion in the sense that you could create a page for a product or
company, and be promoted significantly solely by the likes and shares you get.

~~~
raverbashing
Ah yes, but those type of posts have been having their reach diminish in the
past years

------
muglug
Tech companies have demonstrated over and over that they love to flirt with
journalism, but they never want to commit (a notable exception is Amazon's
Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post[1]).

I hope this encourages news organisations to disentangle themselves from tech
companies as fast as possible.

[1] [http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/06/washington-
post...](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/06/washington-post-jeff-
bezos-donald-trump.html)

~~~
franK_
After overloading the world with information it can't ever process, I don't
think either news companies or tech companies know what the fuck they are
doing or what they need to do next.

------
gumby
Good for them if true: FB goes back to being user-driven engagement. Getting
news from FB would be like getting news from television. Neither reliable nor
practical.

------
josh_carterPDX
IMHO what is likely happening is that FB is trying to change things because of
recent world events. I'll admit that I've stopped going to FB often because
it's filled with very depressing news events. Some of it comes from pages I
follow or friends of mine, but overall it's just filled with depressing
content. So perhaps they're hoping the community will post more positive life
experiences.

------
cft
Too late. It used to be cool to post your pictures on Facebook, and now it's
cool not to post your pictures on Facebook. The show is over.

------
marcusgarvey
Can't help but wonder if this has something to do with the recent allegations
against them of having a bias against certain kinds of news.

------
hitr
I think the changes have big effect on Indian Media ,they already lost 100
million page views [http://factordaily.com/indian-news-sites-lost-100-million-
pa...](http://factordaily.com/indian-news-sites-lost-100-million-page-
views-500k-three-weeks-no-clue/).

~~~
corobo
There's also been submissions here regarding Indian media where they've
started blocking adblockers.. Maybe there's just a lot of people using
adblockers and this is coincidence?

------
uptownJimmy
Facebook tweaks its algorithms constantly. Facebook's algorithms tweak the
algorithms constantly. This is just PR fluffery.

------
perseusprime11
I am sure they are making these changes based on their engagement data but
ultimately how many of us here believe that their engagement data is really
down because some of the activity between friends is happening on Snapchat.

------
kirykl
My facebook feed has helped me realize how much I hate my friends and family

------
ulfw
I get the feeling Facebook is running out of ideas and just rejigger the same
thing over and over again. How often had the newsfeed changed? How often for
the better?

------
brebla
Anyone else think this is related to the meeting they had with Glenn Beck, et
al.?

~~~
brokentone
(disclosure, used to work for GB), but doubtful that changed much. It's likely
the fact that feeds have been dominated by published and pirated content for a
long time. Individuals are publishing less: [http://www.inc.com/jeff-
bercovici/facebook-sharing-crisis.ht...](http://www.inc.com/jeff-
bercovici/facebook-sharing-crisis.html)

------
reachtarunhere
Life is easy for 9gag now.

------
cygnus
how is this even a news?

