Could Facebook’s new Newsfeed Voting Scupper Digg?
Even if currently in the beta stages, Facebook expects to provide a feature that will allow consumers to give an opinion on items in the newsfeed. Facebook’s newsfeed attraction uses a special algorithm to call up pieces it it judges will be appealing to a reader. The voting feature would help visitors have a say in what is ‘worthwhile’ and should show up in the newsfeed.
It’s much simpler to support on an item by clicking the plus or minus button, versus clicking a link that sends the user to another page. Thus Facebook is hoping that users will be more disposed to vote on articles even if they don’t click on them. This will provide very useful information to Facebook, which they may not currently get from users who notice something and think to themselves but neglect to click on it. At the very least it’ll improve the usefulness of the algorithm, much like Google’s algorithm is relentlessly fine-tuning itself based on user input.
Currently, ads also get posted on the newsfeed. One believes that the voting system will also permit a visitor to minus the ad and keep it from appearing again, including similar ads.
Finally, Facebook can use their voting function to look across Facebook to find out what the most voted headlines are - positive and negative. Sound familiar? It’s the precisely same thing operating the popular site, digg.com. With over 50 million users, Facebook has a massive pool of users to harvest data from and see trends across a large cross sectional group. This feature will increase Facebook’s value by billions, and could decrease Digg’s by several million.
Whatever the outcome, as these 2 market leaders of the Web 2.0 world battle it out, there will be a constant supply of digg clones and facebook clones nibbling away at their toes, forcing both companies to be more creative and generate new ideas.
There is no rollout date as yet , but it seems as if it’s imminent, as it is at this time in the beta phase, available to Facebook employees only.
