Facebook Commits to Focus on Connecting People and Bringing Them Closer Together

Social Interaction? by Holger Thie licensed under (CC by 2.0)

A few hours ago, Facebook affirmed the foundation of their existence which is bringing people closer together and building relationships. To align with this, they connect people to meaningful posts of friends and family and show them more on their news feed to encourage more interactions.

Recently people have been concerned with the proliferation of public content from businesses, brands and the media has been crowding their moments on Facebook. The sentiment has been voiced out and going around within the Facebook community.

In a recent post today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg shares how they plan to make time on Facebook time well spent. Facebook was built to help people stay connected or bring them closer together. By confirming their commitment to put friends and family at the core of people's experience, people will spend more quality time on Facebook.

Facebook will use signals to determine the number of reactions, shares and comments to rank how they will appear or how much of them should appear on their News Feed. From there, Facebook will predict post that you are likely to interact about with friends or family or those within your circles of interest. It could a post from a family member from overseas, a news article, movie or sports event that you and your friends have a common interest on or a question about a hobby or craft posted in community or group pages.

Research shows that people feel happier if they can connect with people they care about rather than just passively reading articles, watching through videos or mindlessly scrolling through their news feed. Facebook feels responsible for making their products and services not only fun but also good for people's well-being. Given this, it is making a shift in directions from focusing on helping people find relevant content to having more social interactions. In the coming months, we should see more posts from our friends, family and groups and less of public content. Where there are more interactions, Facebook will show more of such posts to encourage conversations and keep it going. They understand that this will bring down some measure of engagement, particularly with public posts, but will make time with Facebook more valuable. This may have an impact on the reach of Pages and some businesses for now, but it is the right thing to do and is good for the community. So in the long term, it will be good for Facebook, too.

People will still see posts from Pages that they follow and prioritise them in their News Feed so they will not miss posts. However, posts that generate active conversation will be more visible in news feeds - often, these include live videos, a content of common interest among groups, or events created by local businesses as a means to connect with their communities. Strategies that do not promote authentic interactions such as engagement baits will be de-prioritised and decreased in the news feed.