Facebook is taking the news out of news feed.
Given the multitude of changes the social media website has gone through since its Feb. 4, 2004, founding, I don’t like it, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise.
I joined Facebook a year after the launch, back before it was public – traded or otherwise. You had to have a university email address to sign up.
I was a sophomore at Missouri State University, and it was new and exciting. A frequent Myspace user – don’t judge me – I was familiar with what would become known as social media. But Facebook was different.
You had to be part programmer to run a Myspace page; Facebook was easy, clean and simple.
Back then, your Facebook “wall” was literally an editable box. People could write things, draw pictures, erase old posts, edit others’ posts – a drastic difference from today.
The site went public – accessible to anybody over the age of 13 – in 2006 and continued its metamorphosis into a juggernaut.
Today, everybody and their grandma has a page – no offense Nana.
For many, it’s a lifeline to far-flung family and friends. For most businesses, it’s an expected necessity. For news organizations, such as Springfield Business Journal, it’s one of the ways we communicate with you.
Like it or not, Facebook drives our lives.
In April 2015, Facebook made a drastic change to its algorithm – the formula that determines which posts appear most often in your news feed. Rather than chronologically – like they were in the beginning – the algorithm determines what it thinks you want to see most.
Site builders said the algorithm would give users “the right mix of updates from friends and public figures, publishers, businesses and community organizations.”
But, according to Facebook, it wasn’t enough.
“We’ve heard from our community that people are still worried about missing important updates from the friends they care about,” company officials said in a news release.
Announced June 29, the social media website’s most recent algorithm update gives priority to updates from friends – selfies, check-ins, baby pictures and the like. The formula gives lower priority to posts from businesses and news organizations.
So, what’s that mean for you, the reader? As the algorithm rolls out over the next couple of weeks, you’ll see fewer SBJ posts in your news feed.
Online, algorithms reign supreme, but we can fix that.
I’ve got step-by-step instructions on how to keep our relationship on steady ground. If you have any questions, feel free to email me. I’ve had a Facebook page for 11 years – more than a third of my life – so as an old pro, I’ve got this covered.
Springfield Business Journal Features Editor Emily Letterman can be reached at eletterman@sbj.net.
