After nearly a decade of unprecedented growth, Facebook (News - Alert) is trying to be more accessible – or at least to appear that way - particularly to businesses whose advertising dollars drive the behemoth’s financial model.

An announcement this week highlights a new “Facebook for Business” page and blog, which the brand’s development team will use to communicate upcoming changes to the News Feed algorithm. The post that’s making waves begins:

We are continually working to improve News Feed and from time to time we make updates to the algorithm that determines which stories appear first. We’ve heard from our users and Page owners that we need to do a better job of communicating these updates. Starting today, we’re going to try and change that. News Feed FYI blog posts, beginning with this one, will highlight major updates to News Feed and explain the thinking behind them.


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Note that the changes are being communicated to the business community, which is more likely to take the time to read and understand the strategy behind changes at the level of algorithms. This is a huge market for Facebook, with over 10 million registered small businesses on the site and more than 42 million “pages” used for a variety of promotion and sales.

Everyday users are welcome to read the blog updates, of course, but are more likely to just continue yelling at their laptop, or griping to friends about how lame the new thingamajig is on Facebook.

The Facebook for Business page was launched on July 23 and, as of today, only boasts 9,518 likes, which is arguably low. The blog launched on July 25 and so far only contains four posts, so this news about News Feed updates coming to the blog may be designed to drive traffic. In truth, it’s not easy to navigate between the two portals, with the link to the blog buried at the very bottom of the Business page under “Latest News.” With the way Facebook enjoys tweaking design, though, it’s a fair bet that they’ll quickly correct this oversight.

Facebook for Business includes basic instructions for complete Facebook newbies, help with setting up a business page, and tips for things like launching new products or promoting an app. There are explanations on how to interpret Facebook Insights page tracking statistics and a slew of testimonials from both large and small businesses.

Thus far, the blog has addressed topics like how to create an install ad for mobile apps, a profile on one small business’ success with Facebook ads, and the announcement about News Feeds.

The plan for News Feed is to add an automatic bump function that will move a story a user missed seeing up to the top of the feed if it has been receiving interaction from friends. The bump will allow a user to scan through stories without feeling like they’re missing out if they don’t scroll all the way down to the last thing they remember reading.

Since it is a business blog, the post points out that, “for Page owners, this means their most popular organic Page posts have a higher chance of being shown to more people, even if they're more than a few hours old.”

Good news for Facebook businesses, but it remains to be seen how the end user, the all-important customer, will take to the change.