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Example of “click-bait”
headline provided by Facebook. (Facebook)
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Ever
seen those headlines that start with “You will NEVER believe…” that are
shared by your friends or promoted by advertisers on your Facebook news feed?
Now
the social network says it’s trying to crack down on exactly those kinds of
headlines, which it describe as “click-bait” because the teasers are
aimed at encouraging people to click on them without giving much
information about what readers will see next. Such posts often get a lot
of clicks, and the more clicks they get, the higher up they will be shown
in your Facebook news feed. Over time, these stories can drown out content
from your friends and Facebook pages that you might really care about.
According
to a survey by Facebook that asked users what type of content they
preferred to see in their news feeds, 80 percent of the time people preferred
headlines that helped them decide if they wanted to read the full article
before they had to click through.
In response, Facebook announced in a press
release on Monday that it had made some improvements to its
news feed to “help people find the posts and links from publishers that
are most interesting and relevant, and to continue to weed out stories that
people frequently tell us are spammy and that they don’t want to see.”
The
company said it will recognize click bait articles by measuring the amount of
time users spend on their site visits after clicking on the article link.
If people spend time reading the piece, Facebook will take that to mean
the link took them to something valuable; if they just clicked on it and
came straight back to Facebook, it will suggest that the link didn’t lead
to any “quality” content. Facebook said it will also take into account the
ratio of people clicking on the stories compared to people discussing and
sharing it.
“A
small set of publishers who are frequently posting links with click-bait
headlines that many people don’t spend time reading after they click through
may see their distribution decrease in the next few months,” Facebook said in
the press release.
The
closely held algorithm that determines what users see in the feed is crucial to
businesses and also to news sites.
http://www.washingtonpost.com
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