Social & Digital Update: Facebook's New Update Roundup
Facebook is beginning to introduce a range of new features that will give users more control over their News Feeds. As the platform is under scrutiny from both the users and policy makers globally, there is an increased pressure to ensure their platforms and tools are meeting the needs of all stakeholders. They’re also removing Facebook Analytics in the coming months.
Control What You Share
Facebook is introducing a new tool to give users increased control over what they share to the News Feed by managing who can comment on their public posts. Now, users can control their commenting audience for a given public post by choosing from a menu of options such as anyone who can see the post to only the people and Pages that are tagged.
Control What You See
Facebook is also making it easier to sort and browse the News Feed, giving users more control over what they see. They recently launched ‘Favorites’, a new tool where users can control and prioritise posts from the friends and pages they care about most. Users who interact with the Favorites function frequently can access it from the ‘Feed Filter Bar’, a new menu at the top of News Feed. The Feed Filter Bar offers easier access to the ‘Most Recent’ timeline setting, making it simpler to switch between the algorithmically-ranked News Feed and a News Feed sorted chronologically with the most recent posts first. For business owners and managers of social media pages it is now, more than ever, important to provide a value exchange with your audience, this will help you to remain relevant organically with them.
Although these two changes are minor overall it gives people more control over Facebook’s often non-transparent algorithms. These changes may be due to the company repeatedly coming under fire over misinformation and unwanted content in recent years.
Facebook Analytics
Facebook announced they will be removing the Facebook Analytics function. However it is still available up to June 30th. Users can still access reports, explore insights and export charts and tables until then. Facebook is now pointing businesses on its platform to their other features that are available for reporting such as Ads Manager, Events Manager and Facebook Business Suite. The scrapping of this feature may be due to Facebook's data privacy coming under scrutiny in recent months.