Facebook Tweaks News Feed to Show More Relevant Videos

Facebook is starting to get smarter about the videos it is showing its users in its news feed: The social network is starting to take implicit actions into account when weighing whether to show users certain videos in their feed, Facebook’s Meihong Wang and Yue Zhuo wrote in a blog post Monday.

Facebook has long had explicit signals for stories and videos shared in its news feed. Users that press the “like” button for any given video, or share it with their friends, are going to see more videos like it. However, not everyone chooses to take such explicit actions when watching a video, which is why the network is starting to listen to more fine-grained signals.

“Certain actions people take on a video, such as choosing to turn on sound or making the video full screen, are good signs they wanted to see (a) video, even if they didn’t want to like it,” the post reads.

Facebook frequently tweaks the algorithms used to decide which content to display in a user’s news feed, which can also have a significant impact on publishers. Recently, the company began to take video viewing time into account for the amount of videos displayed within a particular news feed. Users that watch a lot of videos on Facebook get to see more of them, while users who frequently skip videos get to see fewer.

Videos have become a big deal for Facebook as the company is closing in on YouTube in monthly views. In April, Facebook said that it clocked 4 billion video views every single day.

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