Facebook is back at it again, as the social network has announced yet another algorithm update to make sure users see the most relevant stories at the top of their feed.
The latest update will take "time spent viewing" into consideration, which takes into account how likely someone is to click on an article and then spend time reading it. That said, Facebook will not be including loading time into account, just time spent reading and watching once the content has fully loaded. Facebook also says it will be looking at the time spent "within a threshold" as to not accidentally treat longer articles preferentially.
"With this change, we can better understand which articles might be interesting to you based on how long you and others read them, so you'll be more likely to see stories you're interested in reading," Facebook said in its announcement. "This change only factors in the time people spend reading an article regardless of whether that time is spent reading an Instant Article or an article in the mobile Web browser."
In addition to time spent viewing, Facebook notes that it will be making an update to reduce how often people see several posts in a row from the same source in their News Feed. Doing this will make users' feeds less repetitive. Lastly, the social network notes that most Pages won't see significant changes as a result of the algorithm change, although some may see a small increase in referral traffic while others will see decreases.
