Facebook is going to limit promotional messages in timeline – update

From January next year, Facebook will once again thoroughly overhaul the timeline of users. This time, the internet company wants to limit promotional messages, it announced.

A survey of hundreds of thousands of Facebook users shows that users want to see more posts from friends and Pages, and fewer promotional posts. According to Facebook, the latter group is experienced by the users as advertising, while the messages are placed on pages that they themselves follow.

Now, according to Facebook, there is still too much promotional content in users’ timelines. This is because the algorithm is not set up for that. It only looks at the advertisement to be shown by taking into account which pages someone likes and how often someone visits those pages, and therefore does not take into account the messages that appear on a page itself.

Facebook says some posts on followed pages feel too much like advertising to users. This concerns, for example, calls to install a certain app, to participate in a promotion and to ‘normal’ advertising. Such messages are often organic, which means that many users see them because others like and share them, for example to participate in a promotion.

The American internet company says it wants to use the same method for promotional messages from the beginning of January next year as for advertising. This means that the number of promotional messages will be limited, while the timelines should focus more on friends and followed pages. According to Facebook, the number of posts from Pages that can be classified as advertising will drop drastically.

Facebook has been actively cleaning up the news feed lately. The company recently rolled out a feature that divides the feed into different tabs, including tabs for the most viewed people, pages and groups. It is also possible to filter messages in the feed separately. Users probably see this as a plus, while it can be a thorn in the side for companies now that their messages can reach potential customers less quickly.

Update, Sunday – Initially it stated that the survey was conducted among hundreds of users, but it must be hundreds of thousands of users. The article has been edited.