Facebook is updating their newsfeed algorithm to show long videos

Facebook  announced yesterday that they will be making an update to their newsfeed algorithm and users will be able to see longer videos in their feeds. They surely have videos set as their main focus for 2017 and will try their best to capitalize on it.

The best part about social media channels like Facebook is that they are very dynamic and understand the need to evolve with time. Probably this is why  it has surpassed all other channels and is clearly the king of social media. Apart from the frequent improvements in their UI (User interface), Facebook also works hard to improve the way content is served to its users and this latest update by them is a clear indicator of how they adapt with changing trends.

Abhishek Bapna, product manager at FB, posted a news article where he said:

“Today, we’re announcing a change to the way we rank videos in News Feed to adjust the value we give to how much of a video is watched. One of the signals we look at is “percent completion” — the percent of each video you watch — to help us understand which videos you enjoyed. If you watch most or all of a video, that tells us that you found the video to be compelling — and we know that completing a longer video is a bigger commitment than completing a shorter one.”

As data has become more accessible and users are now consuming a lot of video content, this move will help Facebook to serve more authentic content to their users. They hope to serve high quality content like Netflix or Hulu through their platform in the near future. Add this to their ambition of Facebook Live and its clear that their want to build a portal for entertainment along with social networking. The recent news of Facebook videos allowing ads like Youtube is also an interesting development to happen parallely.

This move is also in sync with their TV app. The app where users can stream Facebook videos on their televisions while browsing through their streams of content.

“And if you’re streaming a Facebook Live video to your TV, you can see real-time reactions and comments on the screen, and you can join in the conversation yourself by reacting or commenting.

In a way these are elementary steps towards taking over TVs and as Twitter is already working on something similar, we are sure Facebook  will proceed in this direction quickly. The most interesting thing is how all of this will affect the advertising industry, specially media. If social channels like Facebook and Twitter reach or houses and help us stream Live content along with the possibility to engage with it, the media spends by brands might move towards this direction and affect regular TV ad placements. Only time will tell!

Do checkout : Digital Jyotish Series: Facebook and Twitter Predictions for 2017

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