This may not be the kind of experience you want, but after all you aren't the customer here. You may not even be the product - you may just be a side cost of getting ads in front of the lowest common denominator consumer.
The sorting algorithm is for the benefit of facebook and advertisers - and not necessarily by making me spend more time on facebook.
Facebook pioneered this business model and it has worked very well for them financially. Even if you have millions of followers to your Facebook page, you can only reach a small percentage of them without paying Facebook.
(Free services, users, products, etc)
*For Now
One of the two is clearly better at converting users to dollars.
Also, I'm not sure what signals they're using to rank posts. I could imagine using likes and comments, but I don't think that would accurately identify the posts I most want to see. For example, I follow a couple of local restaurants who post specials and similar things on Instagram. I never "like" or comment on those; it seems pointless (I use those actions to communicate with my friends on their posts). If you use that signal, those posts which I always want to see will get pushed to the bottom. I'm not sure what other data they have to use.
I am on the same boat. I'm not sure how they don't see the contradiction in pushing mobile more and more at the same time ignoring the problem that their default newsfeed is stale. They still have the option to switch between 'Most Recent' and 'Top Stories', but it defaults to 'Top Stories' which wasn't the case a while back -- it used to default to whatever I last chose.
Now I don't check Facebook that often mainly because there is nothing new, and its always the same handful of people I am forced to engage with.
In the past, FB has run "experiments" which determine the order you see updates based on the perceived content of the post, in order to manipulate users' behaviors. Without access to the ranking criteria used on a given feed, it would be prudent to assume that similar "experiments" (or worse) could be determining what you see, and when, on any FB service.
I thought Twitter originally said several weeks ago that they would introduce the new feed and then let the user choose to use it or not. So when it first started I thought I opted-out. Just the other day on twitter.com I was shown a list of "best posts" that I needed to close, and then another click to say I didn't like seeing that section.
Even if somehow finding which posts/tweets are "the best" is helpful, I don't doubt that some users prefer chronological order.
It's really disappointing, but then I guess it comes down to the issue of using a free service- in the end they get to choose how it's run and not me.
It's kind of odd seeing all frustrated comments about how it's just about ads and etc. Well, duh, they are a business, not a charity.
The only problem with it is if they disable an ability to switch back. But, again, I can see reasons for that. It might be that they ran some experiments and some that people switch to chronological and then they happen to be less engaged over the time because their chronological, raw feed happens to suck big time.
Perhaps that is the UX challenge companies like these should be pursuing? One of the unfortunate side effects of the valley's growth fetish is that features like "make it easier to break connections" get sharply deprioritized.
I naively dream of a world where products teach the masses "it's easy to settle only for quality, and it's okay to stiffarm the other noise that clamors for your attention"
I see every activity, including comments and even likes.
On the face of it, the article fails to address any of the concerns raised throughout this thread / elsewhere on the internet.
