<story><title>Facebook Overhauls News Feed to Focus on What Friends and Family Share</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/technology/facebook-news-feed.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>untog</author><text>I very much hope this isn&amp;#x27;t just words. The core problem, IMO, is that content that makes us angry, anxious or jealous is a much better driver of clicks than content that makes us happy. I&amp;#x27;m sure Facebook knows this. If they &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; mean it, they&amp;#x27;ll accept that they will make less money as a result of this change. It would be the right decision in the long term, but the short term will hurt.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jp555</author><text>Are clicks the majority of revenue for FB? An ad unit that fills a users screen for a few second as they scroll throughout the day every day is super super valuable to brand advertising. I think that’s ~$450 billion of the total ~$500 billion total annual global ad spend.&lt;p&gt;To me browsing the fb feed is a lot like like flipping through tv channels used to be. Brand advertising loved that too.&lt;p&gt;I’d think the More people browse their feeds the more valuable their ad unit becomes to brand advertisers.</text></comment>
<story><title>Facebook Overhauls News Feed to Focus on What Friends and Family Share</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/technology/facebook-news-feed.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>untog</author><text>I very much hope this isn&amp;#x27;t just words. The core problem, IMO, is that content that makes us angry, anxious or jealous is a much better driver of clicks than content that makes us happy. I&amp;#x27;m sure Facebook knows this. If they &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; mean it, they&amp;#x27;ll accept that they will make less money as a result of this change. It would be the right decision in the long term, but the short term will hurt.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>briandear</author><text>&amp;gt; that content that makes us angry, anxious or jealous is a much better driver of clicks than content that makes us happy&lt;p&gt;Not for me. I&amp;#x27;ve all but abandoned Facebook because I was tired of being angry all the time. It&amp;#x27;s a wasteland of political hysterics.</text></comment>