Facebook asks users for feedback on posts from pages in their News Feed

Facebook has begun to survey some users about how interested they are in the page posts that appear in their feeds, according to AllFacebook.

A “Facebook Feedback” module sits below some posts, asking “How interesting is this story to you?” and offering a five-star rating scale. AllFacebook says it only saw this option on posts from pages, not those from users. The stories were also organic, not paid News Feed ads.

It seems the social network is looking for more qualitative feedback on page posts in order to understand how to improve its News Feed algorithm to show users the content they are most interested in. Responses to survey questions like the one below can be combined with quantitative data about user engagement and clickthrough rates to get a better idea of what users want to see in their feeds.

The frequency of page posts in the feed is an important topic. Although users expressly Like pages and agree to seeing their posts in News Feed, pages often post more frequently than a user’s friends and share content that can feel like spam over time. However, page owners become frustrated when they can’t reach their full fan base, especially if they’ve paid any money to acquire those fans.

Last year when many pages saw decreases in reach, some page owners wondered whether Facebook was manipulating its algorithm to limit the reach of page posts and force admins to buy ads to get their posts seen. Facebook says what actually happened was it made a design change that made it easier for users to mark posts as spam and hide page content, then it began to weight these reactions more heavily in its algorithm. With a better gauge on what users don’t like, Facebook is able to take this negative feedback into consideration and avoid showing content to other users who are likely to also consider it spam.