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Technology Advice for Small Businesses

About News Feed views

Facebook_May26_ATo many, social media has become an integral part of our daily lives. Many businesses see it as an important part of their online presence and a great way to easily connect with a wider audience. Without a doubt, the most popular social media platform is Facebook. If you have logged in recently you may have noticed a change in your News Feed, and what content is shown here.

About the content displayed on your News Feed

The average number of friends a user has on Facebook, and the content they post, is increasing. This makes it difficult to actually see all of the news and posts on your News Feed, which can pose problems for businesses who want and need to keep track.

In order to make viewing content easier, Facebook introduced two views:

  • Top News
  • Most Recent

These two views can drastically change the content you see on your News Feed, and the order it is displayed in. In recent months, the company has changed the default view to Top News for all users. This has created some confusion though, especially for those who want to view everything posted.

Here is an overview of the two Facebook views:

The Top News view

This view is an aggregate of the most popular content posted by your friends and the Pages you follow. If you log out of Facebook and come back after a while, this will be updated to show which posts have gained a lot of attention since you have been gone.

These posts might include a funny video that has received a lot of comments, or even a post from another Page that has gone viral. Now, unless you change it, this is your new default view when you log into Facebook.

To determine what to show in this view, Facebook uses an algorithm which factors in what content is being interacted with and how many people are interacting with it. It then displays this content as being the most relevant and what it decides you are more likely to find interesting. However, this view does not show content chronologically.

For businesses this view option can be really useful. If you have posted content that has been interacted with then there is a better chance that it will be seen by other users through this default view.

The Most Recent view

As the name suggest, this view is of the most recent posts on your News Feed. Posts are presented chronologically with updates from all of your friends and Pages.

This view is a great way to track everything people are posting so that you don’t miss those posts which wouldn’t be included high up in the Top News view. For businesses, this allows a valuable insight into what people like and don’t like at any given moment, and to be able to respond to interactions which are important but haven’t necessarily become popular. It could be that by seeing these posts and coming back with a reaction that you then create a flurry of interest which would then be seen in the Top News view.

How to switch between them

Looking to switch between views on your News Feed? You can easily do so by:

  1. Logging into your Facebook account.
  2. Pressing News Feed on the menu on the left-hand side of the page.
  3. Clicking the gray arrow beside News Feed and selecting either Top Stories or Most Recent. This will switch your News Feed view to the one you select.

If you are looking to learn more about Facebook in your business, contact us today to see how we can help.