MENLO PARK — Facebook is letting its 1.4 billion users play a larger role in deciding what goes at the top of their News Feed.
Responding to feedback from people on the social network, the company said Thursday it’s releasing new tools that allow users to select friends and pages they would like to see first in their stream of posts, photos and videos.
Putting users in the driver’s seat will not only keep eyeballs on the site, but will likely help Facebook rake in more dollars because it could be even tougher for businesses to get their posts seen by users unless they pay for ads, analysts say.
“Chances are that people aren’t going to put brand pages at the top of their list and that is going to further reduce the likelihood that brand posts will be seen by people unless they pay for advertising,” said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst for eMarketer. “Human nature seems to indicate that you would pick your friends over companies.”
Trying to get a user to see an unpaid post on News Feed has been a growing challenge, especially for small businesses that don’t have a lot of time or money to spend on ads.
Concerned that people will leave the site if shown too many ads, Facebook this year began filtering out many of the unpaid status updates users receive from business pages they’ve “liked” on their News Feed. The company also said this week that it’s changing the way its charging for certain ads and will no longer include likes, shares and comments in the price, only clicks to websites and apps.
Still, giving users more control over what they see on News Feed is a “smart move” by Facebook to keep its billions of users staying on the site, said Nate Elliott, an analyst for Forrester Research.
“These guys are better than anyone else in the social space in making users happy,” Elliott said.
From allowing users to follow or unfollow people on the site to giving them an option to hide ads from certain brands, the News Feed preferences are among a string of new features the company has rolled out in recent years to allow users to control what they see on the site.
Before, Facebook used information about who users interact with, along with posts that they liked and commented on more frequently, to organize what posts popped up at the top of News Feed.
“Our goal is to help you connect with the people and things you care about the most, and this is another step in that direction,” wrote Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a post about the new “News Feed preferences.”
The new features, which users can access through the website’s settings, also allow people on the site to find new pages and filter out content they don’t want to see by unfollowing pages or people.
It’s being released first on iOS devices and then on Android and desktop.
At any given time, Facebook’s News Feed displays about 300 out of more than 1,500 stories a person logged into the site could see from friends, businesses and more. On average, a Facebook user reads only 100 of those stories, according to the social media company.
But it will still be up to the user to decide if they want to provide Facebook more information about who their favorite friends and pages are on the site.
“Facebook can already deduce a lot of that based on who you interact with so it’s just sending a more clear signal to Facebook about what you are interested in,” Williamson said.
Contact Queenie Wong at 408-920-2706. Follow her at Twitter.com/QwongSJ.
