Facebook focuses the feed

With the latest algorithm update of prioritizing comments between friends and family, Facebook aims to improve our experience and save us from being “alone together”.

Explain it to me like I’m 5

Facebook announced that it will make changes to its news feed that makes it more likely you see content that sparks discussion (read: comments) between your friends and family, and less likely you see content from publishers and fan pages.

As expected, this brought out a flurry of tweets and articles focusing primarily on what this means for Publishers and journalists that rely on the platform for traffic.

Didn’t Facebook already make this change in 2016?

Well, sort of. As Adam Mosseri, head of News Feed at Facebook tweeted:

“A key difference between this and the change from 2016 is this is a refocus on meaningful interactions between people — things like friends commenting back and forth about anything, including media — whereas in 2016 we were focused on people seeing more stories from friends.”

While Facebook’s mission of bringing people closer together remains the same, this tactical change of focusing on meaningful conversation is rooted in the effects that social media has on health and wellness.

Turns out passive consumption is making us sick

It’s been known that a person’s well-being is closely tied to the strength of their social relationships. Only recently have researches learned that consuming and publishing content without engaging can be detrimental to our health.

Facebook’s own internal research team highlighted this in a December blog post: Hard Questions: Is Spending Time on Social Media Bad for Us?

From the article:

A study we conducted with Robert Kraut at Carnegie Mellon University found that people who sent or received more messages, comments and Timeline posts reported improvements in social support, depression and loneliness. The positive effects were even stronger when people talked with their close friends online.

Simply broadcasting status updates wasn’t enough; people had to interact one-on-one with others in their network. Other peer-reviewed longitudinal research and experiments have found similar positive benefits between well-being and active engagement on Facebook.

In other words, passively consuming our friend’s highlight reels from the sidelines without commenting makes us feel bad, the same way posting a photo that nobody engages with does.

Connecting people: more than a social strategy

This isn’t just a social media thing — today’s strongest brands are the ones that are able to connect people on any medium. Look no further than the most buzz-worthy marketing trends and you’ll see connecting people at their heart:

Nostalgia: GAP reverting back to the 90’s when it was in the collective consciousness.

Experiential marketing: Blade Runner 2049 brought its fans together at Comic Con.

Influencers: Connecting with talent that are viewed as friends

Messaging apps: Public or private channels for 1–1 or group communication

Digital Groups: Private news feeds focused on interests or community

IRL Groups: Nike Running bringing customers together, turning them into evangelists

Facebook returns to its roots

Ultimately, the Facebook news feed as a product became too cluttered. In a world where we seek out separate platforms for different experiences and behaviors, Facebook’s news feed seemed to have less of a core identity.

Recently it feels like we started to forget why we were there, became passive consumers, engaged less, and thus used the app less.

Facebook recognized this. In a recent interview with Ben Thompson of Stratechery, Vice-President of the Facebook News Feed Adam Mosseri states:

“…if you’re just consuming content passively, or consuming media content passively, there’s a lot of places you can do that, so I think it’s good on both dimensions. The other thing that we tried to understand is a big shift here is that video watch time is going down specifically, which allows people to comment and interact more, because they’re spending less time watching one video and they’re probably reading a few different stories from friends or other Pages etc. and that’s really what’s driving the overall drop in Facebook time.”

Facebook is essentially creating two feeds for two different behaviors and use cases:

1. The News Feed: Content you would likely comment on from friends, family, and your favorite pages.
2. Facebook Watch: Premium content from publishers & influencers.

Strategies to for brands to consider

1. Create different content for different feeds:

News Feed: It’s all about the comments

• Photos & short form video (consider the length of video a friend might post)
• Content that tags friends and starts threaded conversations

Facebook Watch: Medium-to- high production value episodic content

• Talent-driven
• Matches psychology of platform (there to interact with other people)
• Emulates proven competitor models in YouTube and influencer content

2. Leverage interest and community-based private groups:

Private Facebook groups have been blossoming recently as a way to have a seemingly algorithmic-free connection with people around a topic or interest in a much higher-value and consistent.

Prediction: The more purpose-driven brands will see higher success with private groups on Facebook or on other platforms like Telegram, Discord. Slack. etc.

Strategies to avoid

• Focusing on organic reach or content that links back back to owned properties
• Reach and traffic — commoditized and have never been the best use of social platforms anyway.

What’s the takeaway?

Create content that slows the scroll and makes people say “That’s so true”.

Ultimately, for brands that have been driving engagement with paid content targeted at specific audiences, not much will change. Brands will always maximize their success on any social platform when producing content tailored towards specific audiences that are looking for a particular experience.

By viewing content more as a conduit for people to connect through, and less as a passive consumption experience, brands will win trust and loyalty, regardless of future algorithm updates.