Mark Zuckerberg hopes that you spend less time on Facebook showing you more friends and fewer pages

Your Facebook wall, that main page that in English we know as News Feedand as Últimas Noticias, will soon start one of your most important changes. They say their managers that this social network was created to bring people together and create relationships and therefore, during the coming months, the content of companies, pages and media will give much of their current space to give greater relevance to the content of our friends and relatives.

The measure, one of the most significant that has suffered the feed in recent years, prioritizing in a generalized manner the type of publications, photos, videos and articles that its more than two billion members see in order to encourage people to interact with the people we care about. This, in Mark Zuckerberg’s opinion, “may be good for our well-being.”

We can feel more connected and less alone, and that correlates with long-term measures of happiness and health. On the other hand, reading articles or watching videos passively – even if they are entertaining or informative – may not be as good.

Some statements based, according to the entrepreneur, on external academic research and own research done with leading experts, which remind us of the article published in mid-December by two scientists from the social network. The conclusion was similar: share more and you will be happy . On Facebook, of course, they look for more interactions . Because they recognize that there is some news that helps to initiate conversations on important topics, “but too often nowadays, watching videos, reading news or updating pages is a passive experience”.

“I hope the time that people spend on Facebook goes down

Prioritize the content of friends and family compared to the pages and companies has not come as a surprise, Facebook has been turning to this chronology model since 2015 , however it has surprised something that Zuckerberg has said in his publication , ensuring that he wanted to be clear .

By making these changes, I hope that the time people spend on Facebook and some compromise measures will go down. But I also hope that the time you spend on Facebook is more valuable. And if we do the right thing, I think it will be good for our community and our long-term business.

Admitting that Facebook users will probably spend less time on the social network should not be good news in itself for those who support the company, for investors . Because of the time spent on the site depends on the advertising that is consumed and, to a large extent, the money that Facebook enters. Although we can do other readings.

If the time spent on reviewing publications is smaller but more satisfactory, with a greater presence of content from friends and family that could potentially act more, could change the perception of users and make them, perhaps, more prone to ads . The change is bad news for publishers and media , whose web traffic is strongly influenced by users who come from the social network run by Zuckerberg, but may be better news for advertisers, who will ensure that their advertising is displayed between content that, in theory, more like and more is enjoyed.