Facebook announced today that it’s going to start showing its users more posts from their friends and family in their News Feed, which will result in less posts from brands and publishers.
For people like you and I this is great, we get to spend more time seeing and interacting with things we care about. The move is designed for that reason, Facebook’s logic is that you’re probably more likely to comment and discuss a post shared from someone you know rather than a business that you follow.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday, “Recently we’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content — posts from businesses, brands and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.”
He also said, “Now, I want to be clear: by making these changes, I expect the time people spend on Facebook and some measures of engagement will go down,” he wrote. “But I also expect the time you do spend on Facebook will be more valuable.”
This sounds like a win for almost everyone….except publishers who rely on Facebook for traffic, or a business who uses it as a form of marketing. Companies dump tons in money specifically for those reasons, and now that might have to change.
Facebook said the reason for the changes come after some research that said that lots of people felt crummy after aimlessly scrolling and not interacting through their News feed.
Facebook wants its users to interact, Zuckerberg said, “We feel a responsibility to make sure our services aren’t just fun to use, but also good for people’s well-being.” Zuckerberg went on to say, “The research shows that when we use social media to connect with people we care about, it can be good for our well-being.”
