Have you ever wondered why some of your friend’s status updates appear at the top of your news feed, whilst others are pretty much non-existent? We know why. Facebook uses an algorithm similar to the way a search engine does to create an order of relevancy in your news feed.
The algorithm is called ‘Edgerank’. The algorithm determines which of your connections are the most important to you, and displays their updates more frequently. These connections are then rated against each other in terms of importance and then displayed. You see this as your News Feed.
So why is it called Edgerank?
Everything we do on Facebook is known as an 'edge'. So for example clicking 'like' is an edge, commenting on a status is an edge. Anything you do which will create new content or change content is known as an edge. So, the News Feed is a results table of the most important edges. These are ordered using the Edgerank algorithm... Simple!
The next question is how are the edges then rated in terms of importance? They are rated using three elements within the algorithm. These elements are: Affinity, Edge weight and Recency.
Let’s look at these three elements.
Affinity
This part of the algorithm is based on how friendly you are with another user. For example if you often speak to someone on Facebook, you will soon see they are top of your News Feed most of the time. This interaction between another user shows a relationship. This relationship will be seen by the algorithm and your News Feed will be adjusted accordingly.
The only problem with this part of the algorithm is it becomes a vicious circle. You interact with a user, they are top of your News Feed, you interact with them more and the others are forgotten about.
This is strictly one way so don’t panic. You looking at a user’s profile does not mean you will appear higher on their News Feed.
Edge weight
This part of the algorithm decides that some edges are more important than others. It is widely accepted that the 3 areas which are given the highest edge weight are videos, photos, and links.
Each user has a different edge weight. So someone who constantly ‘likes’ other users' photos are more likely to have photos at the top of their News Feed than someone who doesn’t.
Recency
This one is pretty obvious. The newer the content is, the more chance it has of appearing at the top of the News Feed.
So…..
When determining your News Feed, Edgerank looks at all of your friends' content, decides how important it is to you, what your relationship with the user is and finally, how recent and relevant the content is to you. From this we get our News Feed.
This may not have any impact to a regular user, but from a marketing perspective this is one piece of information you really need to know when running any campaign.