Facebook is tweaking your News Feed again. The tweaks in the algorithm will show content based on time you spend to view a post, instead of showing stories based on what you like, comment and share. Facebook says that generally, people spend more time on stories, photos, and accounts that are relevant to them.
Regarding the change in the News Feed ranking, Facebook, said:
From this research, we learned that in many cases, just because someone didn’t like, comment or share a story in their News Feed doesn’t mean it wasn’t meaningful to them. There are times when, for example, people want to see information about a serious current event, but don’t necessarily want to like or comment on it. Based on this finding, we are updating News Feed’s ranking to factor in a new signal—how much time you spend viewing a story in your News Feed.
Based on the fact that you didn’t scroll straight past this post and it was on the screen for more time than other posts that were in your News Feed, we infer that it was something you found interesting and we may start to surface more posts like that higher up in your News Feed in the future.
Facebook recently tweaked its algorithm to show content from close friends on the News Feed. It is also testing a new feature for mobile users that would let them them pick particular friends and pages to give priority to, in their feeds. The new change in News Feed has started rolling out gradually and will take several weeks to complete.