Hyderabad: To ensure quality time for visitors, Facebook will prioritise posts by friends and family members over public content by publishers and brands. Mr Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, on Thursday posted, “Research shows that strengthening our relationships improves our well-being and happiness. But recently we have 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.”
It is a known fact that public content has exploded on Facebook. An avid Facebook user, Mr Arvind Konduru, said, “I often missed posts from friends and I thought they removed me as a friend. But my news feed was crowded with sponsored posts. Sometimes, I have to visit their profile to know what’s happening.”
Zuckerberg is aware of the repercussions and is looking for long-term gains. He further wrote, “By making these changes, I expect the time people spend on Facebook and some measures of engagement will go down. But I also expect the time you spend on Facebook will be more valuable.”
The new move has not gone down well with publishers and social media campaigners. Mr Akhil Karthik, who runs a social media campaign, said, “Facebook is making it difficult for social media marketing. As such, the ad rates have increased. Small brands will suffer”.
According to Mr Adam Mosseri, head of News Feed, “The impact will vary, depending on the type of content they produce. Posts that generate conversation will show higher on news feed. In fact, live videos on average get six times as many interactions as regular videos. ”
