In a surprise about-face today Facebook Inc., has announced changes to the way content is displayed in its news feed, in an attempt to make it more usable and less rubbish than it has been for several years now.

Under the changes, content from your friends will now be more prominent in the news feed, or in Facebook’s words, it is trying  “to ensure that content posted directly by the friends you care about, such as photos, videos, status updates or links, will be higher up in News Feed so you are less likely to miss it.”

The converse of giving more prominence to content from acquaintances is that content from brands and pages will now be displayed further down the news feed, however with the proviso that pages that users have previously interacted with (say regularly commented on or posted to) will still be shown.

The multiple posts from the same person rule in the news feed has been abolished so that users can now see multiple posts back-to-back from the same contact, delivering what Facebook describes as “improving the experience for people who don’t have a lot of content available to see.”

The last change downgrades the prominence given to posts other friends/ contacts have commented on. In Facebook’s words:

Lastly, many people have told us they don’t enjoy seeing stories about their friends liking or commenting on a post. This update will make these stories appear lower down in News Feed or not at all, so you are more likely to see the stuff you care about directly from friends and the pages you have liked.

What’s the catch?

The changes should be welcomed by Facebook users, although perhaps not so much brands on the service who aren’t paying for promoted placement.

Going back years ago Facebook changed the news feed away from a timeline of in-order friends post to its bizarre, noisy mix of what it thinks you want to see, complete with rubbish you didn’t want see, particularly brand pages.

While this won’t get rid of all the noise from advertisers, it sounds like a positive step forward.

But what’s the catch?

It would be nice to think that Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook executive team gathered around a fireplace singing kumbaya while channeling inner spirits to find the ability to think of what’s best for the user versus their bottom line, and given it was 420 day earlier this week, maybe that’s how it played out.

But given history with Facebook there has to be a catch: is the downplaying of pages a push to get more advertising money for promoted brands on Facebook, wrapped in spin about them improving the user experience?

Are active user numbers dropping as the Facebook news feed becomes more and more of a dogs breakfast of unreadable, occasionally irrelevant noise?

We may never know the real reason, but credit where due with the changes: they’re long overdue.

photo credit: Facebook via photopin (license)