Facebook announced a few specifics regarding changes coming to the news feed algorithm (EdgeRank). Overall the algorithm still works mostly the same, with the exception of a few new improvements. We’ll explain each change, and what you can do about it to stay on top of your strategy.

1. @EdgeRankChecker
What Did Facebook
Announce, and How Does
It Impact My Strategy?
August 6, 2013

2. Overall the algorithm still works
mostly the same, with the exception
of a few improvements.
We’ll explain each change
and what you can do about it to
stay on top of your strategy.
@EdgeRankChecker

3. What Happened?
@EdgeRankChecker
Facebook recently held a small gathering to
explain their latest changes to the news feed.
A few key takeaways:
• There is still an algorithm determining the news feed
• New Story Bumping Signal
• New Last Actor Signal
• Future New Chronological by Actor Signal
• There will not be a purely chronological change

4. Story Bumping Signal
@EdgeRankChecker
Story Bumping is a new Organic Ranking factor. Each visit, Facebook
looks at all of the new content and creates corresponding scores. A
Post decays on average after about 3 hours because of Time Decay.
Therefore most people’s news feeds lack old content.
With Story Bumping, objects with high EdgeRank (and assumably
now very low values of Time Decay) can be bumped into your feed if
you “missed the update”. This update to the EdgeRank algorithm
ultimately decreases the effect of Time Decay.

5. Story Bumping Signal
@EdgeRankChecker

6. How To Take Advantage
of Story Bumping
@EdgeRankChecker
We believe that Post Lifetimes will now have a larger variance. Posts
that are inherently good will most likely be able to pick up
engagement well past the typical 3 hour average we’ve seen in the
past. However, posts that are inherently bad will most likely die a
quicker news feed death.
It will now be more important to know how quickly a post is likely to
die. If the post seems destined for a quick death, the next window of
opportunity is much sooner than you may typically expect. We’ll be
studying this in the future.

7. Last Actor Signal
@EdgeRankChecker
Facebook keeps track of who a user has made the
last 50 interactions with. People & Pages that have
been interacted with these last 50 interactions, will
receive a small bump in value (Affinity).
Ultimately, these interactions are now having a
stronger influence into the Affinity component.

8. How To Take Advantage
of Last Actor?
@EdgeRankChecker
For Pages, it is ideal to be one of those last 50
interactions to receive that bump. For some brands,
this will simply mean delivering excellent content at
the right intervals (optimal post frequencies). Some
brands will be able to significantly increase their post
frequencies, and this may aide the likelihood of being
included as one of the Last Actor’s actions.

9. Chronological by Actor Signal
@EdgeRankChecker
Facebook has not rolled this out. Facebook is considering
rolling it out in the near future, once they’ve optimized a few
things. Initial results have not been as successful as they
would have liked.
Facebook attempted to make a Chronological By Actor tweak
to the feed. This will help with understanding real time
content. This change essentially removes Time Decay from
the algorithm, while increasing the value of the Last Actor
signal, therefore giving the user the ability to view interesting
content in a chronological listing.

10. How To Take Advantage of
Chronological by Actor
@EdgeRankChecker
There is nothing to do but to wait until this is rolled
out. This may or may not affect Pages.

11. Is EdgeRank Dead?
@EdgeRankChecker
Facebook no longer uses the word internally, however they
apparently refer to it as the “algorithm for the news feed”. Not
quite as catchy or easy off the tongue, as EdgeRank.
EdgeRank still seems to be the most popular unofficial term
around, and we’ll be the first to let you know if that changes.
Lars Backstrom, the engineering manager of News Feed
rankings at Facebook, said that “the three primary EdgeRank
factors — Affinity, Weight and Time Decay — are still
important pieces of what is today a much more complicated
News Feed ranking algorithm.”
Facebook does not have an official name for the algorithm.

12. Read more on our blog!
edgerankchecker.com/blog
@EdgeRankChecker