[Lieyun.com (WeChat ID: ilieyun)] Reported on September 12 (Compiled by: Mancy) Editor’s Note: The author of this article, Jessi Hempel, is the head of Backchannel’s editorial section. She specializes in writing business stories and technology culture.

[Lieyun.com (WeChat ID: ilieyun)] Reported on September 12 (Compiled by: Mancy)

Editor’s Note: The author of this article, Jessi Hempel, is the person in charge of the editorial section of Backchannel. She specializes in writing business stories and technology culture.

Ten years ago today, Facebook was still a platform for college students to update each other, and all 10 million people logged in to the website to use the News Feed function. It is the most important invention in the history of social networking. It has restructured our relationship with personal information, changed the pictures and status we send to friends, and defined new forms of advertising.

People hated the feature at first, but even with the complaints, Facebook data logs found people flocking to it. News Feed caused more people to spend more time on Facebook, a trend that only became more apparent in the following years. At the same time, almost all social services, including Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, have adopted this format.

Initially, the core of News Feed is that its content is filterable: it will manage the information posted by friends and display the parts that are most relevant to you. Whenever new content is released, the company will make adjustments to help people find the information they want. At the beginning, Facebook's tools were very crude, but as time went by, the company continued to develop, and technical staff improved the algorithm, and then used machine learning , supplemented by qualitative analysis, and finally replaced the original technology, and That is, the more frequently people use News Feed, the better it will match content that interests them.

With one in seven people around the world now using Facebook, News Feed has become a preeminent place to get news and information about your friends, as well as updates on election proceedings, tropical storms, terrorist attacks and events happening around the world. Issues. As John Herrman recently reported in the New York Times, "News Feed brings together all kinds of online news in an unprecedented way." Every time News Feed fine-tune the technology, it will have a certain impact on people and businesses. More and more people are paying attention to Facebook to get news. Many news organizations are either struggling to support themselves or have withdrawn from the market. This also means that Facebook has become the editor-in-chief of today's network. However, Facebook insists that it is a technology company and does not develop in an editorial direction. In August, founder Mark Zuckerberg explained to an audience in Rome: "In a media company there are people who produce content and people who edit content, but we don't do that at all. Our goal is to give you organization Information tools that help you connect with the people, companies, and institutions you want.”

Two of the three engineers who launched the News Feed service still work at Facebook. Chris Cox, now the chief product officer, is working on revamping the News Feed. The vice president of advertising and business platforms is Andrew Bosworth, affectionately known as Boz, who handles the company's advertising business. Another engineer, Ruchi Sanghvi, left in 2012. We held two sets of conversations with Cox and Boz about the early development of News Feed, and also asked them to share their thoughts on the current development of News Feed.

Chief Product Officer Chris Cox

News How did Feed come about?

I joined Facebook in November 2005. At that time, the company had at least 50 employees. When I interviewed, the interviewer told me what they were working on. If you use Facebook before opening your News Feed, you'll notice that the site's tagline is "Welcome back." When you click on people's information, you'll find that they're completely out of date, so the company wanted to build a page to solve that problem. Will

News Feed be a game changer? We tested

for six months before it was finally launched. A big part of what you want to create comes from something you're passionate about, and we love this service and we're sure it will spark a reaction and everyone will love it. But we were wrong.When we launched News Feed, we thought there would be 10 million people on Facebook using it. The load on the server is low, so we work late into the night, and if we want to make more changes, we have to work overtime until midnight or even one o'clock in the morning. When we launched it, we were thinking, "Come on, let's see how everyone responds, I'm sure everyone will love this new service!" However, most of the feedback was, "Turn it off! This service sucks." That’s it!”

Are you nervous about this?

It's really disappointing to get such feedback, we work so hard. For example, we don’t have an infrastructure construction team. I almost sleep next to the computer. Once an error report log appears, I can wake up quickly and verify and fix the problem as soon as possible. But our belief has always been that once people use News Feed, they'll love it. Mark is also fully involved in the development and decision-making of News Feed. After getting feedback like this, it's the first time I've seen Mark contact the user to apologize to them. We didn’t do our research before launching, and that was a lesson for us.

Facebook This also triggered the first public discussion of privacy issues, right?

Since then, we have announced a number of privacy controls for monitoring the distribution of content. We didn't use all the tools right away, but we took action immediately after hearing the comments.

Do people understand that you are creating a new way to spread social information? Will others continue to use it?

It is very interesting to watch the early things develop step by step. There are two types of people calling for it, each accounting for 1 million people. One type of people calls for "shut down the News Feed", and the second type of people calls for everyone to pay attention to Darfur. of violence. If you remember, 2006 was a year of humanitarian crisis. There are only 10 million people using Facebook, but the number of people making these two calls has reached 1 million each. This phenomenon is very good and also hints at the feasibility of News Feed.

If every feature has a profound impact on people, how do you make adjustments?

We look closely at what people want to do, and News Feed was born out of people's activity on Facebook. We also make changes based on changes in user behavior. What is the process of adjusting

? In the early stages of

, which was not very advanced, a woman would sort out the receipts sent back overnight and then report the feedback to me, just like reading work emails every morning. Now we can use telecommunications to conduct more extensive international surveys. We have users around the world, have thousands of different device combinations, and have developed more sophisticated tools to find what's going on, investigating and understanding what's going on better than ever before. We can also know which mode is causing the error.

People have something they want to have, they say what they want to have, and eventually they get it. What role does Facebook play in these decisions?

We want people to have an experience that they find meaningful. It's like going home and having dinner with your family, or having drinks with friends, and that's when they say what they want to say.

How complex is it to show different things to different people? How do you set the rules?

Well, it's been a very, very long journey. If you look at Facebook ten years ago, you won't be able to connect with a lot of people, and you won't be able to have stories later on. The biggest change is the addition of more information. Today, you can see a 360-degree panoramic view of the Dolomites just by using your mobile phone. It is active and has sound. I hope to convey my experience to you. As time goes by, this idea becomes a reality.

Let’s talk about News Feed in a political context. If you show me more things than I want to see, it will inevitably affect my political stance.So what should Facebook do about this? Or what are you planning to do?

A lot of the content you see on Facebook is based on weak ties and has nothing to do with your close friends. Before there was Facebook in the world, most of the time you were discussing things happening close to you with the people around you. But Facebook brings you news from people you've never met, and at least for me, I get more perspectives from different sources. But I also admit that it can be a little confusing to hear so many strangers’ perspectives.

So you mean people get more opinions from Facebook?

I mean, mathematically speaking, most of the content you see on Facebook stems from weak ties. Can

News Feed push all the news and information a person wants?

We will push the things that are most important to you. I think the most important things to me are about friends. The more important things are what is happening in the world, my city and my company, and how are my friends' children. , some information is lamentable, and some is amazing.

VP of Advertising and Business Platforms Andrew Bosworth

News Feed What was it like in the early stages?

To a large extent, News Feed made me understand Facebook better. It didn't start out as an idea, but it was a problem that needed to be solved. Chris Cox, Ruchi Sanghvi and I stayed in a small room. Ruchi served as the product manager, Chris was responsible for the front end, and I was responsible for the infrastructure construction and maintenance levels. It's so hard to find products you like, but Facebook users still come back over and over again. So our mission is to help people discover what they desire.

While you are doing this, Myspace has become the leader in the industry. But it doesn't have the same functions as yours, so did you get your inspiration from somewhere else?

We did not refer to any products. If we had been in Silicon Valley or had some experience in this area, maybe there would be traces of other products in News Feed. I haven't even applied for a Myspace account, maybe I'm not trendy enough. After

News Feed was launched, the feedback was not satisfactory. What do you think?

is indeed difficult to accept. We deeply believe that we have solved a big problem for people. Everyone should love it instead. It is so full of surprises and eye-opening. But such results also teach us how to adapt, how to show the value of software to the outside world, and how to make people understand the problems you want to solve. This is a lesson, and we are ashamed of it. The feedback was different than expected, so we started thinking, "What can News Feed change? Do we have confidence in it? What is good about it? How can we ensure that we solve people's problems?"

Do you have the urge to change it immediately? ?

One thing we have confirmed is that engagement and activity on the platform exploded overnight and have not come back. Ironically, even protest groups on Facebook attest to the product's success. Facebook has 10 million users, and the protest group alone has 1 million people. Such a large-scale protest has never appeared before News Feed, so the influence of this technology can also be seen from the number of protesters.

Did you do advertising at that time?

We did do side-page advertising, and for the first few years we did advertising in the News Feed. But it was just some sponsored websites and sponsoring groups, not like it is today. Groups that have sponsored the News Feed will appear on the page. The first big sponsor was Victoria's Secret, then Apple, both of which appear in the right-hand margin. What was the turning point in the early development of

News Feed?

has several points. Hierarchy and relevance are the baseline of the product, but we actually shifted away from hierarchy and relevance and released everything, but we quickly learned the importance of hierarchy and relevance.Another huge change is about real-time performance. It used to take 30 minutes to update dynamic parameters. Now the company has matured a lot, has more funds, and the price of RAM has also dropped. The third big change was that in 2010 we reintroduced advertising into the News Feed. We're very careful about that, but we also want to create a good experience for those who see the ads, and if you look at how successful News Feed has been over the past few years from a business perspective, it's the quality of the experience. ensured our success.

Have the challenges faced changed over the past decade?

Facebook’s huge scale brings challenges and opportunities at the same time. Back in 2006, we sent a survey and there were only more than 40 people in the company. "On a 10-point scale, how much do you like looking at photos? How much do you like seeing text updates?" Initially, the Facebook algorithm's tiers were based on a survey of more than 40 college graduates who had joined Facebook in 2006. Work. Of course, in the weeks since the News Feed launched, we've gotten more information and the algorithms aren't just processing it.

Over the past decade, some developers and companies have adapted the News Feed algorithm for personal purposes. How do you combat this behavior?

Over the past few years we have been talking about researching qualitative analysis. This can basically be used to restrict and balance the raging machine learning, or let us see who is artificially digging loopholes. This is specifically for those scammers who want to sensationalize, and qualitative analysis also makes it more difficult for those people to profit. In addition to representing Facebook's new features,

News Feed is there a higher level of understanding? For example, define it as a new way to spread social information?

does not. After the twists and turns of the launch, some media articles said that it was a very bold move for us not to pay attention to page views, because at that time, page views represented the life of the website. But we're just solving problems that people have, and we believe in relevance and putting users first. We believe that as a company with a sense of mission, we will eventually change all software, change the world, change the way the world connects, and change the way the world interacts.

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