Facebook News Feed update shuns 'click-baiting' to prioritise summarised articles

Facebook has, quite altruistically, tried to reduce spammy posts on its News Feed with two new updates.   Annoying posts that grab your curiosity only to find that the page contains no meaningful content after you’ve clicked, have now been shown the door. Facebook’s new update tries to shun such ‘click-baity’ news, by scrutinising user actions. These links would earlier get higher ranks on the News Feed as they tend to draw in more clicks.   Facebook does this by noting how much time users spend away from Facebook’s website after clicking on such a link. Lower browsing times mean that the news isn’t meaningful enough to engage the reader. Facebook also takes the number of likes and comments into account to deduce if the post is something a user will want to read.   [caption id=“attachment_230938” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”]  Click-baiting posts such as this don’t reveal much[/caption]   The second update will change the way social media marketers publish stories on Facebook. Posts that display the title with some text explaining the context will now get higher precedence over posts with just a link and a large picture.   [caption id=“attachment_230933” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”]  Facebook post without the link format[/caption]   This allows users to see whether the link to the post contains relevant content or not. Facebook insists that the link format shows some additional information associated with the link, such as the beginning of the article, which helps you decide if you want to click through.   [caption id=“attachment_230934” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”]  Facebook post in the link format gives some context[/caption]   According to Facebook, posts with link format (which appears when you paste a link while drafting a post) receive twice as many clicks compared to links embedded in photo captions. Not only is this something that social media managers should take notice of, but it also means common users get to read some part of the webpage before clicking on them.