Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook. (image credit:digitalreviews.net)
On Thursday 11 January 2017, social media giants, Facebook, announced that it will be making significant changes to the platform by shifting users’ news feeds back toward posts from friends and family and away from businesses and media outlets.
In a post on Thursday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that feedback from users revealed that public content has been “crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.” The shift is aimed at placing a focus on content that will spark conversation between friends an family who use the site. This is according to Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg admitted in his post, that by making these changes he does expect that the time people spend on the social network and number of engagements are likely to decrease. Zuckerberg, however, added that the changes will see the time that people spend on the platform become more valuable.
The announcement came after Zuckerberg revealed that his resolution for 2018 was to “fix” the social network he co-founded. 2017 was a watershed year for the platform as it came under scrutiny and criticism for contributing to a climate of extreme political polarisation, the distribution of fake news and escalating privacy concerns.
The changes are expected to come into effect over the next few weeks.
By Dean Workman
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