Up until recently, the Facebook News Feed used to be broken up into two parts: Top News and News Feed. Most people did not even realize there was a difference, so don’t worry if you never noticed.
Now, there is only one News Feed in the center of your home page which features only what Facebook considers “Top Stories.” Now, before getting all upset about the appearance that Facebook is “choosing” what you see, the upside is you get more quality content. Only those updates that are shared most often get to be labeled “top stories.” In essence the whole community of Facebook users determines which posts or “stories” get the most visibility. In my opinion, this is a VERY good thing.
One of the main criticisms of social network users has always been too much sharing of seemingly useless and irrelevant information. For example, you probably won’t actually see many posts like “I just gave my dog a bath!” or “I had pepperoni pizza for dinner tonight!” because if they don’t get shared among users, they will no longer show up in your Newsfeed.
Instead, those updates will now appear in the “Ticker” located along the top right side of your Facebook home page. The Ticker shows ALL updates from ALL of your friends in real time, much like Twitter. And just like Twitter, you will notice it moves pretty fast. Blink twice and you may miss a post or two, or ten! You still get all the updates but they just don’t occupy valuable space in your Newsfeed.
Now, only the most frequently shared content will occupy prime real estate in your Newsfeed. This puts more emphasis on sharing quality content and more pressure on businesses to ramp up the quality of their content in order to be visible. If the share button is to Facebook what the re-tweet is on Twitter, only the most shared, best-quality content will be most visible.
I like this because it puts the emphasis on quality rather than quantity, which I’ve always believed to be of utmost importance in social networking. The fact is you can post dozens of updates everyday, but if your friends and fans aren’t sharing your posts, you lose not only credibility but visibility. The cream rises to the top – as it should be!
So, the next time you post on Facebook, ask yourself if the content is really relevant to your target market. This could have a direct effect on the number of people who see your message in a continually more crowded online space.