Facebook Changes Could Limit Amount Of Small Business Posts, Local Headlines In News Feed

A new move by Facebook could limit the amount of local news headlines and updates from small businesses that pop up in your News Feed.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO, announced Thursday evening that the social media platform with 2 billion users around the globe would begin shifting its news feed to focus on more “personal moments.” The change means less reach by local shops and less news reaching users from outlets like LevittownNow.com, a small business based in the Levittown area that employs local residents and vendors.

The update to the News Feed will “prioritize posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people” and also “prioritize posts from friends and family over public content,” Facebook said in a note sent to news publishers.

“Recently we’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content – posts from businesses, brands and media – is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other,” Zuckerberg said. “I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions.”

“Because space in the News Feed is limited, showing more posts from friends and family and updates that spark conversation means we’ll show less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses,” Facebook told publishers after Zuckerberg’s announcement.

The change takes place after months of speculation about the future of the News Feed and Facebook growing their advertising platform. It also follows mounting criticism for the amount of negative posts, violent content, fake news articles, scam pages and brand posts that can negatively impact people. For years, experts have pointed that Facebook and content on it can cause social problems for some people.

Small businesses and brands that do not pay to advertise will likely see organic reach and interaction level decrease as the updated News Feed is rolled out to users. Many small businesses with limited budgets who use Facebook for promotion could run into problems.

A quick way to stay in touch with local businesses is to follow these tips to keep them in your News Feed, add them to your list or get notifications.

“This is certainly something that should be worrisome for small businesses. That includes the ones that don’t have a chance to constantly tend to their social media or have low interaction rates. This may hurt those businesses the most,” said LevittownNow.com Publisher Tom Sofield.

LevittownNow.com‘s team has met with Facebook officials numerous times over the past year, offered feedback, corresponded with representatives from the company, offered Facebook-backed Poynter Institute training to reporters and attended events as part of the Facebook Journalism Project.

This week, news broke that Facebook is working with some local publishers and brands to test a page that will pull local news and events together on a special page, according to an article on Recode. However, it is unclear if this local page will roll out to all users or whether people will even traffic the information.

Data shows that a little less than 50 percent of LevittownNow.com readers reach our local news content via social media networks. Facebook is the largest social media referral source with Twitter coming in second. However, Sofield said, there has been more of a push over the past year to get readers to sign up for the free evening newsletter, the In The Know Club membership program and authorization to receive notifications for content published by this news organization on Facebook.

“At its best, Facebook has always been about personal connections. By focusing on bringing people closer together — whether it’s with family and friends, or around important moments in the world — we can help make sure that Facebook is time well spent,” Zuckerberg said.