Facebook changes News Feed, giving priority to fast loading websites

On the blog post, Facebook engineer Jiayi Wen and Shengbo Guo said the change was in response to the discomforts that the Facebook community complained about slow-loading websites. According to Facebook engineers, 40% of users can't wait longer than 3 seconds to download a website, and Facebook wants to make sure people can spend more time reading what they want.

To do so, Facebook says that they will take into account the network connection speed and the average download speed of the website. If both are slow, the link will show in a lower position on the News Feed. Pages will have to determine whether their site meets Facebook's speed standards.

Facebook evaluates connection speeds to display News Feed content

TechCrunch reports that sites using Facebook's Instant Articles will not see a decline because the format has reduced heavy code and limits advertising for faster downloads. Facebook also did not mention improvements to Instant Article users.

This update is just one of many things Facebook does to increase the user experience on the News Feed. Facebook said they rated users' devices and network connections, displayed fewer videos and more status lines if the connection was slow. They also create cache for quick access on mobile, download them before clicking to reduce download time.

This change will appear on the News Feed in the next few months.