Tech & Science Facebook is massively changing its News Feed, and it may mean people spend less time on it

© Provided by CNBC Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer and founder of Facebook Inc., attends the fourth day of the annual Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference, July 14, 2017 in Sun Valley, Idaho. FacebookFB is making a major change to its product to make sure that people feel like their time on the social network is "well spent," the company announced Thursday evening.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the platform's News Feed will start prioritizing "meaningful social interactions" versus "relevant content," and that he expects the time people spend on the social network will go down as a result.

"But I also expect the time you do spend on Facebook will be more valuable," he wrote. "And if we do the right thing, I believe that will be good for our community and our business over the long term too."

Instagram Stories For WhatsApp Launching This Year

Facebook is currently testing a feature that would enable users to share their Instagram Stories straight to WhatsApp.TechCrunch reported Thursday that Facebook is currently looking to bring the Snapchat-like feature that patches photos and videos into a slide show to WhatsApp. The company is now testing a feature that allows users to post their Instagram Stories directly to WhatsApp in Brazil. While testing is limited to a single country at present, Facebook has said that it intends to roll out the feature to many users later this year.

Facebook announced its latest update – the second in less than a month – in a company blog post. "For example, you may scroll quickly through your News Feed and like a photo of your friend’s graduation, followed by sharing a funny post from your sister.

More users and more time on site mean more users online to reach (if The News Feed is more a discussion among friends and your challenge as a brand is to get people to talk about your brand for you. Facebook ’s latest News Feed tweak penalizes Pages that solicit likes, shares. Related Topics.

Although Zuckerberg said the changes will take time to roll out, users will start noticing they see fewer posts from publishers and businesses and more content from their friends and family. Meanwhile, Facebook warns Pages that they will see their reach, referral traffic, and video watch time decrease.

Facebook's own major video initiative, "Watch," likely won't suffer though.

Although the company has made similar announcements in the past about tweaks to the News Feed, Zuckerberg described this change as a meaningful shift in the way the company runs.

It's been a year of reckoning for the CEO: The company faced intense scrutiny for hosting fake news, harboring harassment, and having a negative effect on the mental health of users. He has said his resolution this year was to fix Facebook, and it looks like he sees this as a step in that direction.