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Facebook changes to News Feed & Like button

Mark Tomkins

There’s plenty of Facebook myths out there: “Facebook is going to start charging its users” or “share this post and your timeline will turn blue”. Most people brush them off as usual FB nonsense. Some fall for it and the posts in your timeline News Feed are evidence of their internet naivety. However, June has seen two significant (and genuine) changes.

The first, and least important of the two, is that Facebook is changing one of the most graphic assets it possess – its ‘like’ button. After thorough analysis and testing, those clever people at Menlo Park (FB’s HQ) have determined that users prefer and are more likely to use the ‘thumbs up’ icon over the traditional and original ‘F’ like version.

Facebook say that after extensive research the overwhelming evidence supported that fact that its users, of whom most are on the mobile or app version, preferred the ‘thumbs up’ icon.

 

Facebook like icons for comparison

What do you think? Tell us!

 

The second (and we think the more impactful) is Facebook’s announcement on Wednesday 29th June where they told us they were going to make a major change to the News Feed and will favour posts shared by your friends over those posts from brands, advertisers and publishers. What? Facebook favour the free over the paid-for? Surely some mistake?

What does it mean? Well, what it will mean is that when you visit Facebook on (web, mobile or app, most of the posts, pictures and videos you’ll see will be there because your friends have shared or liked them and not because a company whose page you “Like” posted an update.

Facebook’s Adam Mosseri, vice president of product management and the News Feed, has been light on detail and doesn’t say that the posts by Pages or advertisers will be demoted because of the change, but the “friends and family come first” approach will have an obvious effect: Publishers (including Aubergine) benefit from the posts it makes on Facebook for a boost in local business awareness – this will have significant implications for those publishers, such as magazine and news sites, that rely heavily on their content getting shared on people’s News Feeds – thereby increasing the eyeballs on their content.

What’s this really going to mean? Well, it will force the publishers of online mags and sites that rely on their content being shared virally to sharpen their pencil and create content that will encourage ‘Likers’ to share the content more.

The worry at Aubergine is that what this will mean is that yours and our News Feeds will increase the amount of videos of cats, dogs and people from the shallow end of the gene pool making complete spectacles of themselves and will, essentially, block the posts created by your friends and connections that isn’t content that has been shared and has the weight of others liking it behind it. Not good. It’ll mean even more cats jumping 4ft in the air at a cucumber (search for it – it is quite funny).

You thought that’s how Facebook worked? Well, to a degree, you’d be right. Facebook say they don’t favour any kind of content and do no censoring or filtering – but we’re not sure that can be completely true given it will be their algorithm deciding what has been ‘trending’ and what hasn’t.

With more than 1.6 billion users on Facebook right not and their mantra (currently) being ‘content is king’, the justification behind the change is to increase the amount of time users spend of Facebook.  We agree that content IS king but it appears the internet royalty is deciding what we should and shouldn’t see. Cue: Internet Censorship discussions….