Why is THAT in my News Feed? Facebook explains

Facebook offered a deep dive into its its News Feed ranking algorithm on Tuesday, expounding on why it moves up old stories and how it picks which stories it thinks you want to see.

Lars Backstrom, the engineering manager in charge of News Feed ranking, explained how Facebook sorts through the "tens of thousands" of potential posts users put on Facebook each day. While there is a median of 1,500 potential stories that a user can see daily, Facebook inserts about 300 based on an algorithm that guesses how interested you will be in a post by factoring users' reactions to previous posts and the users. Each post is given a score and placed depending on that score. The more likes and comments people make, the more data Facebook has to work with...

Read the full story here... Source: CNET

Facebook buys Storylane blog, to go with new News Feed

Facebook has snapped up Storylane, a blogging site with a community feel that lets people share stories. The social networking behemoth has acquired the team behind the site, rather than the site itself, so if you've posted anything, rest assured, Zuckerberg won't get his mitts on it.

Jonathan Gheller, founder of Storylane, posted the news on the site, reassuring users that anything they'd shared wouldn't fall into Facebook's hands.

"The beautiful stories you have decided to share with us are yours to keep and share in however way you want," Gheller wrote. "We are building tools that will help you migrate the content to other services if you so desire. I will be in touch with you about those specific tools later, but I can confirm that Facebook is not acquiring any of your data; and we're working to make sure you can migrate your content in a manageable way."

Facebook just unveiled its new News Feed, which Mark Zuckerberg said should be like a "personalised newspaper" for each person. Obviously it's a bit late to integrate some of Storylane's features into it, but we could well see some built in at some point in the future. The new News Feed has bigger images -- a staple of Storylane -- and lets you customise it as you see fit. It's also designed to be more consistent across mobile devices and desktop browsers.

It's more of a mix too, with news articles, images, maps, photos, and the rest, much like Storylane, or a Pinterest board.

Storylane only launched last October. Yahoo was also reported to be interested in snapping it up. That seems the way to get rick quick, come up with a killer idea and sell it to Facebook or Apple.

[Source: CNET]

Facebook Announces Newly Designed News Feeds

Facebook announced new design elements to engage users more effectively on Facebook on Thursday.  The new design rolls out today, facebook.com/newsfeed, for some users, but the roll-out will be gradual. The most notable changes include: larger images, videos, more prominent check-ins, more detailed information from publications (like TechnoBuffalo), a greater display of possible friends without having to click on the profile. You could even view highly trending content.

Facebook claims, this allows for “a richer, simpler, more beautiful feel” as well as more choices on what shows up on the news feed. You can determine what feed you want to view from choices such as photos, news content/likes, music and games.

Facebook’s new navigation menu is very mobile-inspired and allows a continuous look and feel across devices (desktop, tablet, phones).  The company claims you get the most out of “smaller screens” to gain a greater experience.  New notifications, that Facebook calls “new stories bubble,” show updates across your feeds, that float on the top of your screen.

While Facebook is excited about this new format, they are planning on rolling it out on a gradual basis to certain users and spreading the new format to a wider audience.  So far we’re excited to see what we can do with the new format of Facebook, from a visual design, it looks cleaner and thus far seems easier to navigate. Take a look for yourself at the video demo below.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

Facebook Will Show Off a Redesigned News Feed on March 7

Facebook’s constantly evolving face will get yet another overhaul at an event scheduled for March 7. One of the biggest complaints users have with Facebook is the cluttered and painful to look at News Feed—it’s an absolute mess, and has been that way for awhile now. Zuck and friends obviously feel the same way.

First Timeline, then Graph Search, now this. What kind of redesign are we expecting? We’ll find out next week.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]