Facebook announced in its newsroom on Monday that it's introducing two updates to improve its News Feed. It is now addressing the issue of click-baiting, and it's also helping its 1.32 billion monthly active users see shared links in a better format.
"Today we're announcing some improvements to News Feed to help people find the posts and links from publishers that are most interesting and relevant," the post says, "and to continue to weed out stories that people frequently tell us are spammy and that they don't want to see."
The first update, the announcement explains, aims to lessen the number of click-baiting posts. Click-bait is a marketing strategy that lures people into clicking a link by using intriguing headlines. The links often lead to content that people don't want to see. But because these posts get a high number of clicks, they are often placed on higher position on the News Feed, thereby drowning out more relevant content.
Through the update, the company will determine if a link is a click-bait by detecting how much time the user spends on the page before going back to Facebook – going straight back to the social media site means that the user didn't find anything valuable in the clicked page. Furthermore, the company will look at the ratio between clicks and the "likes" and "comments" the post gets to determine if a link leads to something relevant.
The second update will prioritize posts that show links in the "link format" or web address form (e.g. http://example.com), rather than hyperlinks (e.g. embedded on photo captions). It will also show information about the link, such as snippets of the article, to help people determine if they wish to go ahead and click the link.
The company recommends using the link format, since it gains twice the number of clicks than what an embedded link gets.
"A small set of publishers who are frequently posting links with click-bait headlines that many people don't spend time reading after they click through may see their distribution decrease in the next few months," the announcement says. "We're making these changes to ensure that click-bait content does not drown out the things that people really want to see on Facebook."
