6:43 AM
Diana D'Cruz
In recent weeks, particularly since the introduction of "Promoted posts", a new pay option that allows a brand to reach more people depending on the amount invested, the algorithm Facebook organizes the way you see in the news your flow seems to have undergone some changes.
If we are to believe some observers, the "reach", ie the potential number of people who see a post in their stream, declining steadily for several weeks. According to others, not. Discontent that seems to grow on the side of brands, which restrain the suspect's Facebook posts complimentary in favor of pay, regardless of their interest, Facebook held last Friday a small press briefing to explain - and possibly defend - its position.
According to Will Cathcart Product Manager for the "flow" of Facebook and spokesperson for the occasion, if EdgeRank, the algorithm that calculates how posts are displayed in news feeds, has recently been changed, it has not changed the reach. To support his point, Cathcart has partially lifted the veil on the new criteria of the famous EdgeRank. Among them, the four most important, those who you see or not to pass a post in your news feed would be:
- is that you have previously interacted with the publications page of the original post?
- is what your friends have interacted with this page, like this new post?
- how you interacted with similar posts in the past (yet to define what a similar post ...)
- is that others have complained about this new post?
- In this way, Facebook aims to highlight the most interesting posts for a user and therefore penalize those who are less so, without any notion of post for which a brand would pay option via Promoted posts. This explains why some posts, even paying do not necessarily reach as many people as you want: if you send a big spam although clumsy and sticky paying up to touch the most people possible, you risk be for your own expense.
Pay to see?
This is probably a good intention on the part of Facebook, which intends to prevent users to be bombarded with irrelevant publications, but it raises questions in terms of the brand or company has paid to aui to see better, because the criteria are still rather vague: why pay if there is anyway not sure to reach as many people as you want?
To Will Cathcart, each user should receive personalized information and different, so ideally there is no two identical streams. This implies that even the same member of Facebook will not receive the same news as it accesses via their PC or mobile (for the moment I have not seen it).
Of course Facebook does not disclose that he wants to reveal, and we imagine that the algorithm is a little more sophisticated than that, but the briefing reveals an inherent difficulty in social network: satisfy both users and brands. While sometimes their interests diverge. Beautiful tightrope.
