Once again Facebook is changing its News Feed algorithm, the latest change will put live videos at the top of News Feeds to increase video engagement and challenge Twitter’s live video app Periscope.
Facebook Live videos rolled out in December and is currently available for verified Pages, public figures using Mentions and just recently all iOS users. Facebook announced changes to the Live Stream algotithm in a joint press release with Facebook’s product manager Vibhi Kant and software engineer Jie Xu.
“Now that more and more people are watching Live videos, we are considering Live Videos as a new content type – different from normal videos – and learning how to rank them for people in News Feed. As a first step, we are making a small update to News Feed so that Facebook Live videos are more likely to appear higher in News Feed when those videos are actually live, compared to after they are no longer live.
People spend more than 3x more time watching a Facebook Live video on average compared to a video that’s no longer live. This is because Facebook Live videos are more interesting in the moment than after the fact.
According to Facebook, people are three times more likely to watch Live video streams than videos that have already passed. With live streams given priority in News Feed, people are more likely to interact and comment with the video which will be seen by the broadcaster immediately.
However Facebook has learnt that there certain actions, such as choosing to turn on sound or making the video full screen, which indicates that people want to see the video- even if they didn’t choose to ‘like’ the video.
