Facebook has confirmed today that it will be downgrading posts from media outlets in favour of video content and posts from friends.
For news outlets and websites that rely heavily on Facebook traffic, this could mean big changes will need to be made.
Addressing the affect on publishers directly, Facebook head of News Feed Adam Mosseri said: “Because space in News Feed is limited, showing more posts from friends and family and updates that spark conversation means we’ll show less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses.
“As we make these updates, Pages may see their reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease. The impact will vary from Page to Page, driven by factors including the type of content they produce and how people interact with it. Pages making posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution. Pages whose posts prompt conversations between friends will see less of an effect.”
Facebook has made the change despite Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg acknowledging that "the time people spend on Facebook and some measures of engagement will go down," however, the change is being made in an attempt to make users time on Facebook more friend oriented.
At the end of December last year, Facebook announced it would begin demoting any post that begs users to take actions like sharing, tagging, liking, or commenting. You can read more on that here.
