Facebook Once Again Decides To Alter News Feeds

Facebook Inc FB announced an upcoming change to News Feed ranking that would help to ensure you won't miss important stories from your friends.

The latest update comes after the social media giant made a similar change in April last year that tried to ensure that stories posted directly by the friends, such as photos, videos, status updates or links, will be higher up in News Feed so you're less likely to miss them.

"We've heard from our community that people are still worried about missing important updates from the friends they care about. For people with many connections this is particularly important, as there are a lot of stories for them to see each day. So we are updating News Feed over the coming weeks so that the things posted by the friends you care about are higher up in your News Feed," Lars Backstrom, Engineering Director, said in a blog post.

Facebook expects this update may cause reach and referral traffic to decline for some Pages. In other words, this change is bad for publishers who rely heavily on having their content appear in Facebook users' news feeds. Notably, readers consider Facebook as one of the key sources to find and read news and other online content.

"We encourage Pages to post things that their audience are likely to share with their friends," Backstrom said.