As part of its commitment towards radically changing the News Feed to show more friends from posts and high-quality news from publishers, Facebook today announced another change to the News Feed. Rolling out today in the United States, the latest update to the News Feed will give a huge push to local news publishers.

The new update to the News Feed will pick stories from local stories that were shared by your friends, or ones that the algorithm thinks are relevant to you. “We identify local publishers as those whose links are clicked on by readers in a tight geographic area. If a story is from a publisher in your area, and you either follow the publisher’s Page or your friend shares a story from that outlet, it might show up higher in News Feed,” the company noted in a blog post.

Facebook believes people care more about what’s happening in their local community, which is the main reason behind the social network prioritizing local news publishers. The company says it will mainly affect small-sized local news publishers, but larger outlets are unlikely to benefit significantly from the change.

Tagged with Facebook, News Feed