Likes, shares and comments on Facebook affect the way a post is seen on the social media network. Facebook has now announced that it will also take into account the time spent on stories to determine if it should appear at the top of a News Feed.

There are many occasions when people do not want to like, comment or share a story, but these instances do not necessarily mean the stories were irrelevant.

Ansha Yu and Sami Tas, software engineers at Facebook, believe that just because a person did not like, share or comment on a story in their News Feed does not imply that it was meaningless or not of interest to them.

Facebook will now evaluate the time spent by a user to read or watch a story and then prioritize it over other stories. Yu and Tas added that they have tried to analyze the way people view their News Feed, and suggest that it is not very simple to evaluate stories based just by the time spent to view a story.

"Some people may spend 10 seconds on a story because they really enjoy it, while others may spend 10 seconds on a story because they have a slow Internet connection," stated the Facebook software engineers. "We've discovered that if people spend significantly more time on a particular story in News Feed than the majority of other stories they look at, this is a good sign that content was relevant to them."

Quartz cites a Facebook spokesperson who revealed that the social media network is also to evaluate if a user is actively viewing a webpage or if the webpage has just been left open in the background.

Facebook has been continuously working to improve its News Feed. In 2014, the social media network updated the News Feed to include more stories and trending topics from a user's closest friends, which are based on Facebook connections. Facebook has also taken steps to reduce the number of hoaxes, promotional stories and click-baits showing up in the News Feed.

The latest change will be rolled out in the coming weeks.

Photo: Eduardo Woo | Flickr