The facebook newsfeed experiment.
Yesterday I posted the following status update on Facebook:
1) Out of nearly 600 friends, we got about 75 "honks" (FAR more than I'd expected). Conclusion: your newsfeed definitely does not go to ALL your friends, but it goes out wider than you'd expect.
2) Out of the 75 "honks", about half of those friends regularly appear on our newsfeed. Conclusion: there is a much lower degree of news-reciprocity than you'd expect. (I get news from people who don't get mine, and vice versa)
3) Some of the people who honked have not been in touch with us for years, or we with them. Conclusion: I suspect the newsfeed is not directly linked to whose page you've been looking at/commenting on.
4) No surprise here: but the more comments you have on something, the more others are likely to see it.
Thanks for participating in my experiment!! Apologies for the flood of notification alerts you would have received. I don't feel like we 'cracked the news feed algorithm', but I hope this is interesting to you - and it was nice to be in touch with so many people.
"I wonder how FB selects whose status updates to put in my newsfeed. I'm curious whose newsfeed this appears on. Honk (or comment) if this update was 'news' for you today, please!"
What a fun experiment. Here are some preliminary observations on yesterday's fascinating experiment, in case you were wondering too:1) Out of nearly 600 friends, we got about 75 "honks" (FAR more than I'd expected). Conclusion: your newsfeed definitely does not go to ALL your friends, but it goes out wider than you'd expect.
2) Out of the 75 "honks", about half of those friends regularly appear on our newsfeed. Conclusion: there is a much lower degree of news-reciprocity than you'd expect. (I get news from people who don't get mine, and vice versa)
3) Some of the people who honked have not been in touch with us for years, or we with them. Conclusion: I suspect the newsfeed is not directly linked to whose page you've been looking at/commenting on.
4) No surprise here: but the more comments you have on something, the more others are likely to see it.
Thanks for participating in my experiment!! Apologies for the flood of notification alerts you would have received. I don't feel like we 'cracked the news feed algorithm', but I hope this is interesting to you - and it was nice to be in touch with so many people.
posted by Bronwyn at 1:46 pm
3 Comments:
I forgot to add what my assumptions were in this experiment.
I assumed that those who saw it, honked.
I assumed that those who saw it also occasionally would make status updates of their own which we would see if their newsfeed was linked to ours.
I assumed that the majority (more than half) of our FB friends check their accounts at least once every 24 hours...
And the fact that this post thoroughly, thoroughly confused me is further evidence that I should NOT join facebook. :-)
This just proves that Bronwyn has retained all her brain cells since becoming a mother, because there is NO WAY I would be able to analyse all that data and draw conclusions without smoke emerging from my ears!!
What about the fact that some of us only go onto facebook when we have a minute to spare - like 4 times a year - and your post still arrives on our page but we didn't get to honk you???
:-) Tracey
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