Facebook Expands Beyond Like, Comment & Share In Ranking Video In News Feed

Facebook is adding more signals to its ranking of video in the News Feed, adjusting the mix to make sure people see more of the videos they like on the social network.

To do that, the company will expand on the traditional like, comment and share metrics and start also taking into account whether people are activating audio, making video full screen and other actions that indicate interest. Facebook has been surveying users about News Feed preferences and has learned that people don’t always like, comment on or share posts despite finding them meaningful. Such research prompted another News Feed change earlier this month — taking into account the length of time people spend on posts.

Facebook engineering manager Meihong Wan and software engineer Yue Zhuo explained more about today’s video change in a blog post:

Many people have told us that they enjoy watching videos in News Feed but don’t always feel inclined to like, comment or share them. For example, you may have found a video from a nonprofit you follow on Facebook to be really informative and you’re glad you saw it but it’s not something you felt inclined to like, comment on or share more broadly.

We are now taking into account more interactions with videos that we have learned indicate whether someone found that video interesting, such as choosing to turn on sound, making the video full screen, and enabling high definition. So if you turn the volume up or make the video full screen, we have updated News Feed to infer you liked the video and will show you similar videos higher up in your News Feed. We have found that this helps us show people more videos that they are interested in.

The change doesn’t appear likely to cause people to see more video in their Facebook feeds. Facebook made that News Feed adjustment a year ago — showing more video to people who interact with video, a move that has fueled the network’s growth into a 4-billion-daily-views video powerhouse.

The change started rolling out today and will continue over the coming weeks, Facebook said. The company said it does not expect most Pages “to see significant changes in distribution as a result of this update.”