
Social networking site Facebook is set to assign higher priority to posts made by users’ friends and family in their news feeds.
The move comes in the wake of concerns raised by the site’s members over their inability to find updates from their friends.
Facebook’s latest step will reduce the space used by the news media and brands for their posts.
Facebook product management vice president Adam Mosseri said: "The goal of News Feed is to show people the stories that are most relevant to them. Today, we’re announcing an update to News Feed that helps you see more posts from your friends and family."
In the surveys it had conducted to identify users’ preferences, the networking gaint found that users wanted increased content from friends.
The findings from the surveys pushed Facebook to modify its algorithms to give more space for posts from users’ friends.
Mosseri told the BBC: "We are not distinguishing in this change if my friend shared a photo of their daughter or if they shared a link to an article about current events.
"We think both of those are content that connects people with their friends… and are valued more highly now in our system.
"It is possible that some publishers may see a small but noticeable drop in reach, but I don’t think this will be a very big change."
The change may lead to reduced benefits for companies that use Facebook’s likes to generate traffic for their posts.
The California-based firm said that it will put friends and family posts toward the top of their news feed.
Mosseri added: "People expect the stories in their feed to be meaningful to them — and we have learned over time that people value stories that they consider informative."
Facebook said that it work to make stories appear higher up in users’ feed by identifying interesting and informative content.
In April, a report said that the networking platform was developing a stand-alone camera app to allow its users to create and share more photos and videos.
A prototype of the camera app developed by Facebook showed a similarity with image messaging app Snapchat, according to sources cited by The Wall Street Journal.
The development indicated an internal "anxiety" in the company over the rising "passive behavior" on the networking site.
While Facebook witnessed many of its 1.6 billion users visiting its site daily or many times during a day, only few of them shared photos, videos and update their status.