What does News Feed mean?
A news feed is a feed full of content related to news and/or news sources. The most common examples of a news feed could be social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, where a user’s profile is full of accounts sharing the latest news from their friends, media channels, and pages.
How to create a News Feed?
Creating a News Feed is as easy as creating an XML file and placing a link to it on the website so that users or visitors can consume this information through a click. An important detail is that the XML file should follow determined conditions to qualify for being a feed. The most common ways for doing so are:
- The method considered the most “old” or primitive is manually creating an XML file and manually placing it on the website. This means that whenever adding a new item, the marketer will have to update the XML manually.
- Using services provided by third-party sites (like the page feedforall.com).
- If the website is built on third-party content management (such as WordPress or Joomla), these tools already have options to create feeds automatically, without the need of coding or hiring third-party services.
- Instead of manually coding, using a script or a query is a way easier method for updating the XML automatically whenever adding a new item.
How does the Google News Feed work?
The Google News Feed is one of the most amazing examples of today’s news feeds. It works as a fully personalized stream of articles, videos, and more kinds of content. The feed’s algorithm works with items from the search story and the topics chosen to follow by the user, as well as the location and the data obtained from the user’s interaction with the platform.
The users use Google News to keep up with the newest headlines. Still, not everybody realizes that news is completely targeted to the user’s data and that it is possible to customize the Google News to get different headlines.
How to customize the Google News Feed?
The settings on a user’s Googles News can be adjusted to:
- Like stories from a specific topic or source, as well as unlike them.
- Follow determined interests like a place, publication, and topic, as well as unfollow them.
- Hide headlines from determined sources.
This can be done by typing in the search bar news.google.com or directly opening the Google News app and at the top of the page searching for topics, locations, and sources and deciding which ones to follow or unfollow.
How does the Facebook News Feed work?
The Facebook algorithm works in many different ways because it gathers user’s data from the way they interact with the platform. It goes from understanding the likes and reactions a person gives to certain kinds of posts to analyzing the conversations and keywords that take place in Facebook Messenger. But besides this, a user can personalize his Facebook News Feed setting.
How to customize the Facebook News Feed?
The steps to follow to change the Facebook News Feed settings are:
- Clicking the three dots next to News Feed and selecting the option Edit Preferences. Here will be displayed the different elements to change.
- Actualizing which friends show first in the feed and which to unfollow.
- Choosing with which unfollowed friends to reconnect with.
- Discovering new pages and users to follow.