Your Facebook feed will soon look a bit different, as the News Feed algorithm has been updated to rank the faster loading websites higher.
As Facebook’s Jiayi Wen, Engineer, and Shengbo Guo, Engineer write, people have been complaining how frustrating it is to click on a story they’re interested in only to be led to a slow-loading webpage. And unsurprisingly, research has shown that when people have to wait for a website to load for too long, they usually abandon it. In fact, Facebook has found that as many as 40% of webpage visitors leave a site after only 3 seconds of delay.
For this reason, Facebook has decided to update its news feed algorithm, so that it shows stories that link to faster loading webpages first.
Facebook explains that to change things the right way, they’re taking many factors into account: the user’s news feed considers the type of device used as well as the speed of the mobile network or WiFi connection. So, for example, if you’re on a slow internet connection and your device is not loading videos, your news feed will either not show videos at all or will show fewer of them.
According to Facebook, the goal of this update is to make your mobile browsing experience more enjoyable.
Source:
Facebook Newsroom (https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/08/news-feed-fyi-showing-you-stories-that-link-to-faster-loading-webpages/)
Digital Trends (https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/facebook-news-feed-update-ranks-websites/)
The Wonderful World of Algorithms 