Meta has revealed its newest Widely Viewed Content Report, which supplies perception into essentially the most seen content material within the app, and the most recent traits of observe in Fb feed consumption.
Meta initially created the Extensively Considered Content material Report back to counter the suggestion that Fb is dominated by controversial and divisive content material, amid studies that right-wing political posts have been gaining extra traction than the rest within the app.
And together with Meta’s efforts to scale back political argument in-stream, there does appear to have been a transparent discount within the prevalence of political-type posts, with the newer Extensively Considered Content material updates displaying loads of light-hearted, humorous posts, versus argumentative updates.
So what’s gaining traction on Fb in 2023?
Largely, Fb customers are serious about a comet that’s set to be seen within the evening sky someday subsequent yr, which accounts for 3 of the highest ten most seen referral hyperlinks from the app. There are additionally celeb tales, a report on Netflix cracking down on password sharing – it’s all fairly innocuous stuff, particularly compared to the divisive political debates that after seemingly dominated Fb feeds.
By way of essentially the most seen Fb Pages, it’s additionally dominated by viral development posters, recipes and pet clips.
So sure, Fb is just about as you’d count on – cute cat movies and celeb traits, with political content material just about non-present amongst its most-viewed lists.
Which, as famous, isn’t surprising, on condition that Meta has sought to scale back the presence of political posts, primarily based on suggestions from customers.
Again in January 2021, within the wake of the Capitol Riots, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained that:
“One of many high items of suggestions we’re listening to from our neighborhood proper now could be that folks don’t need politics and preventing to take over their expertise on our providers.”
That sparked Meta’s workforce to re-align its algorithms to be able to cut back the attain of political posts, which has since seen a discount in such publicity on Fb. And whereas this push additionally confirmed that some customers do nonetheless wish to see political content material in-stream, Meta has clearly taken a step again from this ingredient, by shifting its algorithmic incentives away from political debate.
As a substitute, Meta’s now emphasizing Reels, and consumption of short-form video within the feed, which has seen total Fb utilization on the rise in current months. But, the secondary influence of that’s that customers are posting fewer authentic updates, in favor of consuming video in feed as an alternative – so Fb is actually turning into extra of an leisure supplier on this context, versus a social community, the place individuals look to publish their very own private updates.
That’s additionally mirrored on this stat, which is especially worthy of observe for social media managers:
“92.3% of the views within the US throughout Q1 2023 didn’t embody a hyperlink to a supply exterior of Fb.”
That determine is on the rise – within the first Extensively Considered Content material report, revealed for Q3 2021, 86.5% of the posts seen didn’t embody a hyperlink exterior the app.
In uncooked information phrases, that implies that views of posts with hyperlinks has declined by virtually half over the past two years.
The regular rise in views of posts that don’t embody hyperlinks possible correlates with the rising consumption of video content material, and customers partaking in-stream, nevertheless it’s possible additionally led to a major discount in referral site visitors from the app.
So should you needed to know why your Fb site visitors is down, this might effectively be it.
These are some fascinating notes on Fb consumption behaviors, and the way the feed is shifting in keeping with new utilization traits. And whereas the referral site visitors numbers are taking successful in consequence, it additionally looks like a constructive that divisive political debate is lowering in presence, which might see much less angst and debate total.
Or extra of that dialogue is shifting to personal teams and DMs. Whether or not that may be a greater consequence, I don’t know, nevertheless it’s fascinating to notice the most recent Fb shifts nonetheless.
You possibly can learn Meta’s newest Extensively Considered Content material Report here.
