Facebook news feed algorithm to include time spent on stories

According to an entry on the company’s blog, the update has been introduced based on feedback that even if a user doesn’t like, comment or share a story in their news feed, “[it] doesn’t mean it wasn’t meaningful to them”.

Now, as well as the actions that Facebook users take — liking, commenting, or sharing a post — the algorithm that determines what content is shown to users will also take into account how much time they spend viewing a story in their news feed.

The ranking will take into account not just absolute time spent on each story, as this may be accounted for by other factors such as a slow internet connection, but on relative time spent on stories relative to other stories.

The change has started being rolled out and will continue over the coming weeks.