Facebook is making some big changes in its video distribution algorithm. The company has stated in its blog that it will be putting longer videos on its priority for when the user checks their feed.
In order to adjust the value of how much a video is being watched and weighing it against the time spent and type of video being viewed by the user, Facebook will get to understand exactly what sort of videos they want to push to their feed. If a user spends a certain percentage of the time watching the video, it will enable Facebook to understand the type of content the user is interested in. If the users don’t see the video for more than at least three seconds, they will push the ranking of those down.
According to Engadget, ordinary users may be bombarded with a lot more longer videos than usual, as Facebook will be making a slight increase in its distribution rate of long videos. The shorter videos will not be given much prominence and they may be scarce. This makes sense, as the company was earlier thinking about introducing ads mid-way through longer videos, and not in the shorter ones. In pulling off this move, Facebook will get to kick-start its new advertising model and gauge user interest as well. A win-win, but only for Facebook for now.
It will not affect pages however, but as far as impact goes there seems like there might be some fall out for those pages that are more focused on creating only short videos. According to reports, Facebook was dropping hints to publishers lately to make longer videos so that they are prepared for when this move is being made and their videos are distributed.
Earlier, 75 percent of a two-minute clip was ranked the same as 75 percent of a 10-minute clip. That probably isn’t very fair to the longer videos, so to even out the odds against the longer clips, this move might make sense. But length won’t be the only factors that Facebook will measure for ranking. It will also take into account when the user turns on the sound, when they go into full screen and when they activate high definition.
We really hope they don’t pull a YouTube and make it as intrusive mid-way during videos as YouTube does.
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