Social Media Updates: Facebook’s Embedded Posts and ‘Story Bumping’
August 13, 2013
Say you’re reading your Facebook News Feed and you see a great public post that fits perfectly with the theme of the article you’re writing on your blog. If only you could add an image of that post to your article…
Well, now you can.
Facebook recently announced the rollout of Embedded Posts which will “make it possible for people to bring the most compelling, timely public posts from Facebook to the rest of the web.”
How Embedded Posts Work
Embedded Posts will allow Facebook users to add public posts from the social network to their blog or website. Once embedded, the posts can include videos, pictures, hashtags, and other content, and readers can like and share directly via the Embedded Posts.
In its announcement of the new feature, the social network offered the following examples of Embedded Posts:
The official British Monarchy Page published this post shortly after the royal baby was born. You can click the #RoyalBabyBoy hashtag directly from the embedded post to discover similar content on Facebook.
Andy Murray shared this picture after winning the 2013 Wimbledon Championships. People can like Andy’s Page directly from the embedded post by clicking the “Like Page” button in the upper right corner:
Embedded Posts are currently available on specific publications, such as Huffington Post, CNN, Mashable, PEOPLE, and Bleacher Report, with wider availability coming soon.
News Feed ‘Story Bumping’
In other news, Facebook also recently announced updates to its News Feed algorithm. The social network states that the goal of News Feed “is to deliver the right content to the right people at the right time so they don’t miss the stories that are important to them.”
The changes, coined “Story Bumping” by MediaBistro’s All Facebook blog, will allow posts you haven’t seen, and are getting lots of likes and comments, to reappear near the top of the News Feed later in the day.
Credits: Facebook’s blog
The rationale behind the change is with so many stories on Facebook, it’s very likely a person would miss something they wanted to see if the posts were listed in a continuous, chronological stream of information. The social network admits that their ranking isn’t perfect, but states that in their tests, “when we stop ranking and instead show posts in chronological order, the number of stories people read and the likes and comments they make decrease.”
The News Feed changes have been tested among 7,000 active users during July, reporting a “five percent increase in stories seen from friends, an 8 percent increase in stories seen from pages, and a jump from 57 to 70 percent in overall stories read.”
Facebook states that the goal of their algorithm updates is to “keep improving News Feeds.” What are your thoughts? How else could Facebook improve News Feeds?
