Facebook is always monitoring what you do — and every like, comment, and share is used to help determine the content that shows up in your News Feed.
But Zuckerberg and Co. are taking things a step further with their latest update. Now, you don't even need to like or share a video to signal to the social network that you enjoy this type of content. The company on Monday announced it will begin taking into account more subtle cues — whether you turn up the volume on a video or make it full screen, for instance — to help determine what to show you in News Feed.
"Many people have told us that they enjoy watching videos in News Feed but don't always feel inclined to like, comment, or share them," according to a post from Facebook Engineering Manager Meihong Wang and Software Engineer Yue Zhuo. "For example, you may have found a video from a nonprofit you follow on Facebook to be really informative and you're glad you saw it, but it's not something you felt inclined to like, comment on, or share more broadly."
So now, if you turn on sound, make a video full screen, or enable high definition, Facebook will infer that you found the video interesting, and populate your News Feed with similar content in the future.
"We have found that this helps us show people more videos that they are interested in," Wang and Zhuo wrote.
Facebook said it just started rolling this out and will continue to do so over the coming weeks. The company doesn't expect most Pages to see a significant change in distribution as a result of this update.
The move comes after Facebook earlier this month began using the amount of time you spend looking at a particular story as just one more factor in how relevant (or not relevant) that content might be. So, if you spend a ton of time looking at cat pictures, expect to see more in your News Feed.