May The Feed Be With You: how algorithmic feeds create the best content experience for users

In October 2009, Facebook introduced a change to their News Feed that few people noticed even though its impact has been arguably just as profound. That change was the introduction of algorithmic sorting of content.

Free from the responsibility of promoting friend posts, Meta’s sophisticated algorithms can now curate content from across 3 billion monthly users when making recommendations to turn Home into “the starting point for connection, entertainment and discovery on Facebook”. Because even though users may be requesting a Feed tab to keep up with their fr... See more

There have been hundreds of investigative reports, technical analysis, research whitepapers, statistical studies, PhD dissertations, and more about how TikTok’s secretive recommendation algorithm works. TikTok’s recommendation system is without a doubt incredibly complex and impressive, but so too are the recommenders that Facebook, Instagram, and ... See more

Facebook for example uses 10,000 different data signals to rank a single post and bring it into balance.

Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all build their feeds from content shared by friends and followers. The pool of content their algorithms choose from is limited or scoped. TikTok’s feed however is built from content shared by any user, regardless if you know them or not.

Boosting, restricting, ranking, and recommending content in algorithmic feeds may be the only way that social media can find balance and deliver the content experience that users want.

While the Feed tab launch may have been the headline, the real news is that the Home tab would remain the default place where users are taken. Home comes first, not Feed. This launch isn’t Meta prioritizing your small circle of friends to personalize content for you (Feed), but rather Meta doubling down on the wisdom of its vast data and algorithms... See more