DHAKA: Facebook is to give posts by users’ friends and family greater prominence in their News Feeds.

The social network said its members had expressed concerns that they were missing “important updates” from the people they cared about.

The move reverses a trend towards giving more space to content posted by the news media and brands.

One expert said it highlighted that newspapers and broadcasters' interests did not always match those of the firm.

Facebook said that in several surveys it had carried out, users had told it they wanted to see more “friend content”, and it was altering its algorithms to accommodate this.

“We are not distinguishing in this change if my friend shared a photo of their daughter or if they shared a link to an article about current events,” the company’s vice president of product management Adam Mosseri told the BBC.

“For a long time, Facebook’s advice to publishers and companies was to build as large a following as you can,” commented Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab, at Harvard University.

“Now they say they will be giving more weighting to the sharing activity of your friends and family than that of the companies and publishers that you follow.”

Mosseri said the move was necessary to counteract the fact that not only were more professionals publishing content to Facebook, but they were also doing so more frequently.

“It’s important to publish content that people want to talk about. Sharing is one really good way to talk about things, and that content will continue to do well in News Feed. But we also value comments very highly.”

BDST: 0853 HRS, JUN 30, 2016
BD