Facebook on Thursday announced that it would prioritise and push longer videos in people’s newsfeeds. The company said it has tweaked its algorithm to ensure longer format videos see “a slight increase in distribution on Facebook.”
The social media giant will now rank its videos depending on how long it is watched, whether it’s watched with sound switched on and whether it’s watched in full screen mode.
Another significant factor that would determine the video’s value is “percentage completion”, meaning how much of a video is watched by the users.
Announcing the move through a blogpost titled News Feed FYI, it said,
“If you watch most or all of a video, that tells us that you found the video to be compelling — and we know that completing a longer video is a bigger commitment than completing a shorter one.”
However, the new policy may negatively impact the visibility and reach of shorter videos.
As we continue to understand how our community consumes video, we’ve realized that we should therefore weight percent completion more heavily the longer a video is, to avoid penalizing longer videos,” it said.
It also urged pages to create more “relevant” and “engaging” video content and stated that the length of the video should depend on the story of the video.
The new update will be implemented in the upcoming weeks.