Facebook EdgeRank

The News Feed is the main page that users see when they open Facebook. It displays recent activity from their friends and people that they follow, including status updates, pictures, videos, and links. There are two ways to sort the News Feed- by top news or by most recent news. The default view is of the top news. About half of users click over to most recent news, but it’s safe to say that the top news is the place to be when it comes to marketing. So how does Facebook determine which content makes it into a user’s top news? Facebook uses an algorithm called EdgeRank. Facebook keeps the EdgeRank algorithm secret, so there’s no way to know for sure exactly how it works. But there are a few key factors that we know affect EdgeRank, and today I’ll discuss these factors and explain what you can do to increase the chances of your content showing up on friends’ and followers’ News Feeds.

First off, why does Facebook need the EdgeRank algorithm? The folks at Facebook know that most of us follow many friends, celebrities, companies, bands, and television shows, and that we can’t always keep up with all of the content that they produce. And even if we could, we don’t always want to. I’m sure you have a friend or two (or fifty) on Facebook who you haven’t spoken to in years. They added you as a friend and you accepted, but neither one of you is genuinely interested in each other’s pictures or status updates. Or a friend asked you to “like” their aunt’s knitting supply company on Facebook, and you obliged, but that was the extent of your support for her. Like Google, Facebook has a vested interest in providing the best possible experience to users, and they want to provide users with content that they find useful, interesting, and relevant. So Facebook tries to determine what users like and what they don’t like so that they keep on using the site. (Although, at this point, is there anything that could keep people from using Facebook? Probably not.)

So that’s where EdgeRank comes in. On Facebook, there are objects and edges. An object is something that someone posts, like a status update, photo, video, or a link. And edges are the ways that others interact with that object, such as likes and comments.

In the example shown, Allways McCafferty’s posted a link to a product page, and that link is considered an object. I liked the link and commented on it, and the like and the comment are considered edges. Facebook judges the value of each edge using three criteria:

• Time: How long ago the edge occurred. Facebook has found that users prefer fresh content, so a newer edge will be ranked higher than an older one.
• Type: Certain edges are more valuable than others. For example, a comment is more valuable than a like.
• User: Facebook measures the affinity between users to determine how valuable certain edges are. For example, if I frequently look at Allways McCafferty’s photos, click on their links, and like their status updates, Facebook will recognize that I have an affinity for Allways McCafferty’s, and will show me more of their content. If I am Facebook friends with someone but never look at their profile or interact with them, Facebook will recognize that I have a low affinity for them.

So, each edge is given a rank, and an object’s rank is the sum of the rank of its edges. So a status update is only as good as the comments it receives. And those comments are only as good as the people posting them. What does that mean for your company and your social media efforts? Stay tuned! In my next blog post, I’ll be discussing News Feed optimization.