Facebook's Edgerank - Uncovering the formula of the Facebook News Feed

Facebook's Edgerank - Uncovering the formula of the Facebook News Feed

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  The Facebook Edgerank Uncovering the formula of the Facebook News Feed CHRISTEL QUEK SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIST Twitter: @ladyxtel 1
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  What is theFacebook The algorithm which display the relevant Edgerank? content from users and pages is called Edgerank. According to o cial statistics released by To explain it, here are some initial Facebook, the average Facebook user has 130 definitions. friends. The News Feed is the first page that users will see upon logging into the site. Thus, it is Any content which is generated on your important to optimise the objects -status updates, News Feed is called an Object. An Object can be a photos, videos, links- which users will find more status update, an external link shared by your relevant to their interests, and encourage greater friend or a Page, a photo, and so on. Whenever a interactivity and time spent on Facebook. user interacts with an Object with comments, likes, Facebook has ensured that the News Feed only and tags, an “Edge” is created. The Rank of the displays a set of updates generated from certain “Edge”, i.e. the Edgerank, is thus determined by friends or pages. Furthermore, these News Feed the` interaction frequency that a user has with a updates only seem to be generated from the same friend’s Object. circle each day. This interaction frequency comprises of three components - an a nity score between a viewing user and the edge creator, the weight given to a particular edge, and the time decay factor based on how long ago was the edge created. The a nity score between the user and the creator of the object will naturally be higher if the user interacts with the creator’s profile often. This includes checking the creator’s profile, leaving comments and likes, and sending Facebook messages. There is a measured “weight” of each Edge- for example, a comment carries more weight compared to a Like. Lastly, the older an Edge is, the less important this Edge will become. In short, an Object from a friend or a page Diagram 1: A Facebook “Edge” of Created is more likely to show up on your News Feed if a Content user has been interacting with them often recently. 2
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  trump over Likesas well, and all these will Furthermore, “popular” objects which many of significantly increase the weight of an Edge. your friends have been interacting with recently will also show up on your News Feed. Furthermore, times and dates matter to Facebook. The most recent updates will get more “prime time” on a News Feed compared to Strategic Observations about updates that happened in the past. Edgerank From this insight, a strategic observation is that Edgerank clearly indicates the importance of bringing Facebook users to a friend’s profile or p a g e re g u l a r l y to i n c re a s e v i s i b i l i t y a n d consequently, the a nity score. Moreover, as Facebook favours interactivity, it is important to engage and encourage conversations on objects to increase visibility on the News Feed. This highlights to Facebook that your Object is important when there are multiple interactions with it. Another strategic observation is that “stalking” a particular profile or page does improve the a nity score in Edgerank. The more your profile gets visited, the higher the Edgerank performance of your profile, which subsequently increases the propensity of your a nity score and ensure that your updates hit the “Top News” stories in the Facebook News Feed. Furthermore, to increase exposure to Facebook users, the weight of the Edge needs to be taken into serious consideration. Media such as Photos and Videos are preferred to Links, and Links are preferred to Status Updates. Comments 3
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  Maximising Edgerank for Brands (i)Quality of Fans (ii) Quality of Content While some brands view the numbers of No matter the original objective of “fans” that their brand’s fan page gets as of an establishing a brand’s presence on Facebook, absolute importance, a more precise indicator every brand would want to ensure that their would be the quality of fan interactions that a updates would receive maximum exposure and Brand’s fan page has on Facebook. There are sites coverage. To do that, the said brand needs to stay which o er “Fan-buying” services for Facebook on top of the News Feed and have a constantly Fan Pages, but it is more important to attract high Edgerank with their fans. A Brand’s strategy quality fans ; rather than just the mere quantity of on Facebook is to consider every single fan them. To ensure a continued quality of fans and a interaction as an opportunity to get insights from strong fan base even if the fan page was to their potential customers and learning more about disappear one day is to ensure that the Page will them. Thus, to achieve a high Edgerank and after continue to deliver upon the fan’s expectations of taking the formula into consideration, the goal is to the Brand on the page, and to continually engage post content, polls, and questions that would with them. In a way, the Edgerank is built upon a constantly engage with the fans connected to the certain “Word-of-Mouth” component - with more brand. With a greater variety and engagement organic likes and comments on Objects, the with fans, fans would leave more “likes” and objects would have a higher propensity to appear comments on your brand’s Objects and thus, your on top of the News Feed, and subsequently brand’s fan page will get increased visibility and attracting more quality fans to participate and exposure on the News Feed. There would be a engage with the brand in a multiplier e ect. multiplier e ect as the News Feed will be more likely to show a popular Object which has been commented upon multiple times by mutual friends. 4
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  (iii) Timing It is also clear that timing plays a crucial role in determining the maximum exposure for your Brand’s object on the News Feed. There should be a clear content strategy with a regular schedule which allows the brand to post content, such as status updates and photos, at least once or twice a day. Posting back-to-back updates too often will definitely hinder the ability to get certain content noticed by your fans, and the distribution of fans to post ratio will be uneven. Conclusion for Brands To f u l l y u n d e r s t a n d a n d m a x i m i s e Edgerank, brands must return to the objectives for establishing a presence on Facebook. One of the key ideas is to encourage fans to build a buzz around the brand’s page, share it with their peers, enhance the value of the brand’s presence on Facebook, and pushing it to be a talking point on top of the News Feeds. The presence of Edgerank is thus a clear indication that the power in making or breaking a brand’s popularity and success on Facebook lies in the hands of the consumers, and not solely the brand itself. 5
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  Appendix Diagram 2: Amplifyingthe Edgerank 6