Study: 33% of Facebook Users Want Less News In Their Feed (businessinsider.com)

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Business Insider: According to a survey of 526 random Facebook users conducted by Spot.IM, 33% of Facebook users in the U.S. want to see fewer news articles in their feeds. The survey comes at a time when Facebook is desperately trying to improve the quality of publisher articles that gain traction on its platform. Here are some important takeaways from the study: Older people are likelier to want less news in their Facebook feeds. While 33% of all respondents indicated there was too much news and shared links in their Facebook feeds, the majority of this group was individuals aged 30 or older. Those 30-44 (37%), 45-59 (36%), and 60+ (36%) said they want less news in their feeds. Young Facebook users enjoy consuming news on social media. While middle-aged and older Facebook users don't like seeing news in their feeds, those aged 18-29 were much more interested and excited to see even more news articles on Facebook. 32% of respondents in this group wanted to see more news, while just 21% wanted less. This is an encouraging sign for publishers who want to reach a new generation of news consumers. The majority of people don't care about how much news they see on Facebook. Overall, 51% of all surveyed said they simply don't care if more or less news shows up in their Facebook feeds. A study conducted in June by Columbia University says that 59% of people don't even read the articles they share.

Comments

They've cleaned the response up a bit

[Locke2005]

I didn't say I wanted less news in my feed... I said I wanted less CRAP in my feed!!! Nobody uses Facebook anymore anyway. "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." - Yogi Berra

Re:No news!

[ColaMan]

Every time one of my friends on facebook shares something from some crap aggregator site like "SuperInterestingCoolFunFacts", I go to the little drop-down menu on that post and select "hide all from SuperInterestingCoolFunFacts".

Turns out that most of my friends only get their daily dose of drivel from a few sites, so after a couple of rounds of that the signal to noise ratio improves considerably.