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It’s a good thing Facebook is thinking of redesigning the News Feed. Because I think a funny thing is happening to Facebook.
For me, the news feed no longer surfaces anything of interest. The opaque algorithm behind it is just not able to produce anything relevant and, more important, timely, at least to me. Facebook appears to be turning back into what it once was: a way to research people in non-real time. A look back into the past. A people-stalking product. It’s back to being a personal LinkedIn.
People publish stuff on the (increasingly mobile) web that is timely and relevant. Sharing baby pictures isn’t really one of those. Sharing pics of how you are experiencing life, which is the Instagram use case, is a great example of this. But my News Feed does not have anything like that in it. My Instagram feed does.
People share highly informative and timely links to news articles and blog posts on Twitter all day long. But my News Feed does not contain any of those. And when I share these types of posts on Facebook, I get no engagement. When I share pics of my kids, I get a lot.
People share bookmarks of products and apparel they want to buy on Pinterest all day long. People don’t do that on Facebook.
Facebook started as a non-real-time service. It was a way to check people out. In the face of the rise of Twitter, they responded aggressively with a News Feed product that showed promise. But now I feel they really screwed the filters up that govern that feed, which creates feedback to those of us who post into it and it feels like a vast river of noise and irrelevant posts from people and events who aren’t really relevant to me. Perhaps most importantly, I can’t tune it. The tuning mechanisms are either too subtle (“hide”) or too crude (“report as spam”). I feel powerless.
The irony is that LinkedIn is moving to increase daily engagement by syndicating highly informative posts from influencers. They are trying to become more real-time just as Facebook seems less so.
It’s still amazing for stalking people, though.
