Facebook Is About to Introduce a New Metric That Will Influence Your Posts Performance

Have you ever seen a sad or tragic news story in your Facebook newsfeed but felt too uncomfortable “liking” that post?

If you don’t “like” that post or actively comment on it, it doesn’t always mean that you don’t care about it. For instance, if there is an earthquake on the far side of the world, you may not “like” that post, but you do care about it and all the lives that suffered because of it.

But if you don’t engage with that post — if you don’t hit the like button or comment on it — how does Facebook know that you care about it? Up until now, there was no way for Facebook to know about your interests. Now, there is one.

Facebook is about to introduce a new metric now. It starts calculating the time you spend watching at a post.

This is how it is going to work.

To make things simple to understand, let’s assume that you are not engaging with any posts on your newsfeed. If you scroll past the content in a hurry, that will be an indication to Facebook that you are not interested in that type of content. However, if you take a good, hard look on a post — if you spend some time there — the Facebook timer will go behind the scenes. It will start calculating how much time did you spend on that type of content, trying to understand your interests and preferences.

The Possible Impact

This is an interesting development, but it is too early to put too much weight on this data. You won’t see any dramatic changes in your Facebook news feed. It is going to take some time before Facebook starts using that information.

According to Facebook, they will release the algorithm in the next coming weeks. Let’s see how the impact turns out to be, but don’t hold your breath to see any significant change.