Facebook Is Changing Their News Feed Format

Facebook has announced that it will be ditching it’s current news feed format, and that it will return to emphasizing posts by family and friends. CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg has said that this change is intended to allow more meaningful interaction with content that people see on Facebook.

“The research shows that when we use social media to connect wtih people we care about, it can be good for our well-being,” Mark Zuckerberg wrote Thursday.

The company has stated that people will spend less time on Facebook after these changes, which they view as a good thing. This is so users use Facebook in more valuable ways, interacting with the people most important to them, even if the total time spent on the website is less.

The company’s shares are already being impacted by this news, sliding more than five percent in premarket trading on Friday.

There also has been some concern among experts about whether this change will keep people in their own social and political bubble, not allowing them to see content outside of their social sphere. This could then reinforce their own beliefs and prevent them from exploring and understanding other ones.

Zuckerberg’s full announcment can be read below:

One of our big focus areas for 2018 is making sure the time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent.We built…

Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday, January 11, 2018

Author:
Caitlin Wills is a graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder with a BA in journalism and a minor in creative writing. She has written for various websites including The Odyssey Online and The Tempest, and currently writes album reviews for MXDWN. She is also an avid fiction writer and is working on writing a novel. Follow her on Twitter @caitlinjherrera.