The Facebook Newsfeed algorithm has been a popular discussion topic and applications have been attempting to optimize for it. A good Newsfeed optimization strategy can make or break the success of a Facebook application. The application can’t control everything in the Newsfeed and the user behaviour plays an important role. For example if an application creates a Newsfeed item that is clicked on by many users it will be displayed with a higher priority for other users. The exact process for displaying Newsfeed items is not disclosed but its a combination of popularity, the users preferences and in the timing of the event.

Facebook has just taken the unusual step of removing the time stamps from the Newsfeed. Working with clients on their Facebook applications and their Newsfeed strategy, we’ve seen many situations where the Newsfeed item appears much later than other events. This is normally the weighting that Facebook assigns to more popular News items that it already has an history for and understands the popularity. For a new application this can be a problem because no history exists and many News items will never appear on Newsfeeds.

This brings up an interesting point since time is not one of the options that the users can control. Each user has the ability to change their Newsfeed preferences to adjust the default Newsfeed behaviour. In the Newsfeed preferences its possible to change the following:

• Events
• Groups
• Photos
• Notes
• Relationships
• Friends
• Wall Posts
• Profiles
• Status
• Posts

With no ability to adjust the priority of time in the Newsfeed and now Facebook removing the timestamps completely it would appear the Newsfeed algorithm will continue to improve but may have less focus on the time of the events.