Facebook introduces ‘Story Bumping’ and ‘Last Actor’ features to its News Feed algorithm

Facebook has tweaked its News Feed algorithm to include two new features: ‘Story Bumping’ and ‘Last Actor’. The new features aim to show a user more updates in their News Feed that are relevant to them.

What are the new features?

‘Story Bumping’ places popular older stories that may have been missed towards the top of a user's News Feed. If the story is old but retains a high level of engagement, it is more likely to remain in a user’s News Feed for longer.

‘Last Actor’ will track a user's last 50 actions (including their likes, comments and shares) and give more prominence in News Feeds to posts from people and Pages that they have interacted with the most.

What will be the impact of Story Bumping and Last Actor?

Facebook tested the features amongst 7,000 daily active users in July. The test revealed that organic stories from friends saw a 5% increase in the number of likes, comments and shares. This increase was even more noticeable in the amount of organic stories users saw from Pages, with an 8% increase. 

‘Story Bumping’ will also impact on the amount of stories users will read according to Facebook. Previously, people read on average 57% of the stories in their News Feeds. Due to the impact of the feature unread stories that were resurfaced increased this to 70%.

What do we think?

Facebook’s Lars Backstrom stated that the features will be important for Pages advertising on the social network. For Page owners, ‘their most popular organic Page posts have a higher chance of being shown to more people, even if they're more than a few hours old’. 

As the change does not impact how paid content appears in News Feeds (Facebook recently updated its ‘Facebook for Business Page’ to help brands advertise more effectively), the focus for brands will be on organic content. Brands should place emphasis on creating content that is more likely to get commented on, shared and liked amongst the highest number of users as possible to maintain prominence in News Feeds.