Facebook has launched a new setting for the new hybrid news feed. It allows users to decide if they’d like to see Highlighted Stories First or Recent Stories First. This really isn’t much different than the old news feed tab system (Top News vs Most Recent), although this system wouldn’t show duplicate updates by switching between the two.
The question may immediately pop to mind that creating engagement maybe less important if users are able to select Recent Stories First. There a few reasons why this new setting doesn’t change a thing.
The Average Facebook User Doesn’t Change Many Settings
The first thing to consider with any Facebook setting, is that a majority of Facebook users don’t touch a single setting. They simply login to Facebook.com and use it. This is why optimizing for the old Top News segment was so important. Most users simply left the Top News feed in place, while more savvy users (in the minority) only utilized Most Recent.
With this new ‘sort’ option, it appears that the default is Highlighted Stories First. We’re guessing a majority of users will all use this setting (again due to previous assumption). This alone, would suggest that engagement is still priority #1.
The Essence of Social Media Marketing is Engagement
With that being said, it should always be a brand’s priority to strive for engagement. The essence of social media marketing always digs deeper than impressions. We all know of the Twitter campaigns that follow 100k, with 100k followers, who blast non-stop and receive 0 ROI on their social media efforts. This is what happens to brands when the focus on engagement is lost.
The bottom line is engagement creates “stories” within Facebook. Likes/Comments/Shares all create stories within their friends feed, which can result in more stories in their friends’ friends feed, etc. This is the viral impact that is often discussed regarding Facebook. The more “stories” your brand can create, the more visibility your brand will receive.
If a brand focuses on engagement, they’ll receive multitudes more exposure than if they were to focus simply on impressions.
I don’t know ANYONE who wants to see Highlighted Stories First! It doesn’t make any sense. Unless there is some advertising gimmick involved and there is some kind of profit for Facebook. What I am searching for, and I am sure its what EVERYONE WANTS TO KNOW, is CAN WE SET IT TO DEFAULT TO RECENT STORIES FIRST AS AN OPTION OURSELVES?
I’m with Garrison. Sure would like to make it default. My search for an answer on how to do that is what brought me here. Back to searching for me, though I don’t think I’ll get an answer.
Yes How can we set the DEFAULT to be recent stores first??
Yea, me too. I want recent “stories” as default. And yes, it is a carefully thought out idea to maximize profit. Something about maximum brand exposure with the least amount of effort.
Ditto the other comments… I was Googling how to set recent as the default…. highlighted is obnoxious… the crap they think I care about… I really don’t… I justneant to easily scroll through things that I missed since I last logged on. Why does that have to be so hard?
Er… I just want
Seems the work around is changing your Facebook bookmark to https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr which will bring up recent instead of highlighted… http or https work depending on what you use
Thank you josh!!
This works for me too. Awesome.
Facebook engineers are too smart for their own good. Rule #1 – If your users want to do something, LET THEM. What was I telling you when I kept setting it to “most recent” over and over and over? Your “smart” algorithm is not that smart it appears.
It seems like web companys like facebook, google, yahoo, etc. and they think they know what people like though most of us don’t like the changes they implement. It kind of sounds like a certain political party that’s in the white house now.