Facebook announced another new tweak to its algorithm today. The change involves videos and the actions users take with videos in their News Feeds.
As part of their “ongoing effort to improve News Feed” they found that users do not necessarily want to interact with a post, such as like it, comment on it or share it. However, the post may be meaningful to them.
With the previous updates to the algorithm measuring the length of time a post is viewed, the length of time someone watches a video will now be measured as well. People who watch more videos will see more videos higher in their News Feed.
With this update, we want to show people more of the types of videos they want to see, and fewer of the videos they don’t.
“Many people have told us that they enjoy watching videos in News Feed but don’t always feel inclined to like, comment or share them. For example, you may have found a video from a nonprofit you follow on Facebook to be really informative and you’re glad you saw it but it’s not something you felt inclined to like, comment on or share more broadly.
We are now taking into account more interactions with videos that we have learned indicate whether someone found that video interesting, such as choosing to turn on sound, making the video full screen, and enabling high definition. So if you turn the volume up or make the video full screen, we have updated News Feed to infer you liked the video and will show you similar videos higher up in your News Feed. We have found that this helps us show people more videos that they are interested in.” (Facebook Newsroom)
This change will be rolled out over the coming weeks. Again, Facebook has stated that they do not expect Pages will see a significant change in the distribution of their content, but Pages may want to consider posting more interesting videos.