It amazes me how much the Facebook newsfeed has redefined the meaning of "news" to me, especially now that I've added updates from the NYTimes, NPR and some of the radio stations I love. --There's something odd but real about coming up-to-date on Obama's efforts to salvage the Democrats' chances in the upcoming election and news about the upcoming bat mitzvah at the synagogue.
Behind this feed is an algorithm that pieces this feed together and this is what The Daily Beast thinks it has solved in this article called Cracking the Facebook Code. I highly recommend you taking a quick look at this article so you can better understand the Facebook experience.
We're sure you consider all of your musings fascinating—but Facebook doesn't. At various points in our test, Phil switched between writing plain status updates and posting links to content elsewhere on the Web. Even before some of our friends began stalking Phil, for those who were seeing updates from him, links appeared more frequently than status updates—presumably because links are more effective at driving "user engagement," which translates into people spending more time on Facebook.
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After weeks of testing and trying everything from having Phil post videos to getting some of his friends to flood him with comments, by the end of our experiment, a few of our volunteers had still literally never seen Phil appear in their feeds, either Top News or Most Recent. These were the "popular kids"—users of Facebook with 600 or more friends. (Conversely, those with only 100 to 200 friends were among the first to spot Phil.) So the key, as you build your coterie of friends, is making sure to include some without huge networks. They'll see more of your feeds, interact in Facebook-approved ways, and up your visibility with all.
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