@Lilymoon I see you have "Groups you Subscribe to" slider in the middle. The preset of "Friends Only, Time Based" sets it to the minimum. I suggest you press on the "Friends Only, Time Based" button and save the Feed.
@Lilymoon Or if you mean your other feed "follows", the "Relevant Content" is set to the minimum, when should be in the maximum. Same suggestion - press on the "Friends Only, Time Based" button and save it.
1) What you saw in that screenshot, is largely due to your Feed's setting, of Maximum "Time Posted" priority:
So, out of the relevant users and groups there are available to show to you, the user shown in your screenshot, posted multiple times, minutes apart.
The feed is function correctly, per your chosen settings.
You can try moving your "Post Order / Sorted by" slider to the Middle, for a more balanced feed.
2) That situation is likely an uncommon occurrence for you. Per your feed's current results, that user doesn't appear at all in your feed. (At this moment of me writing this)
It's something that can happen from time to time, if you have your feed set to Max Time Sort, and a user relevant to you has made multiple posts in a short period of time.
3) It appears as though you have made +100 visits to the Feed/Home page, in the past few hours. This high level of usage will cause you to already "See" all post results prepared for you, so it becomes difficult for our algorithms to find relevant posts to show you, that you have not yet already seen.
If you feel that you are getting too few feed results (or you visit the feed a lot, using up your results quickly), you can expand how much content you are shown, by:
a) Joining more Groups that are relevant and interesting to you.
b) Follow more users who's content interests you.
SW-User
That's the thing. I only answered said user's question & liked his reply to my answer and then boom. It happened a handful of times. The feed is unstable I must add. You see new content then next moment it's all gone. Also when I move the sorted by slider to the middle I start to see the same stale 5-6 days old posts. Before this last update the feed had more variety and was much more fresh & "alive" so to speak. It appears to me that posts on the site in general got more views than now as well. I wish that the New (💥) tab can be chosen as the default on the left hand side at least bc it's the best out of them all. @Andrew
We do have planned further improvements for the feed which should be implemented in the coming days and weeks.
Hopefully these improvements will tackle some of the issues you describe, however, we cannot make or offer everything that some users desire.
There will have to be some balance between what we can and cannot provide, we are already providing much more options and customization than what any other social network offers.
(Also, no successful social network that I'm aware of, provides a feed of "All Posts". We at least provide as close as we can reasonably offer.)
Before this last update the feed had more variety and was much more fresh & "alive" so to speak.
Showing more "Random" (yet Fresher) content, only benefits a minority of (more vocal) users, who prefer to see what almost everyone is posting.
Our site's name is "SimilarWorlds", which is our long-term objective, and what we advertise to incoming new users.
We are Not "RandomWorlds".
We are simply, slowly moving towards our mission statement of providing a platform which serves relevant content, according to the user's defined interest.
Our latest changes has not Decreased daily activity on SW. There's been a slight Increase in Total Activity since these recent adjustments.
SimilarWorlds cannot grow and retain new users, if we are showing high amounts of "Randomness" in feeds.
Lots of new users sign up to SW each day, yet leave quickly, because the content in feeds is too disorderly, or not in alignment with the user's selected interests.
All users can still at least adjust the threshold, of how Random or Relevant their feed appears.
I only answered said user's question & liked his reply to my answer and then boom.
Interaction with users and groups, slowly build's relevance over time. It's not typical that first time interaction would cause a user to appear on your feed suddenly.
There may have been past, minor interactions (that might not be easy to recall), and the relevance slowly built up over time, until pushing the user's content into you feed, upon your latest interactions.
You see new content then next moment it's all gone.
That happens when the user/group has some small amount of relevance, enough for them to appear in your feed briefly, but not strong enough relevance for them to "stick" for a while, in your feed.
Following or Favoriting a user (or subscribing to a Group), is very strong relevance, and posts from those sources tend to stick in your feed for longer, before eventually falling off.
SimilarWorlds provides you with a "Seen in Feed" History, for your convenience. https://similarworlds.com/history-infeed
Unlike other social networks, we provide users with a lot of feed customization, and even backup (History) feeds, where they can locate something they previously saw in their feed.
As mentioned before, you can: a) Joining more Groups that are relevant and interesting to you.
to increase the variety and volume of posts you see in your Main Feeds.
We don't prevent users from seeing more content from more sources, but, the user needs to indicate what sources/interests they would like to see most of their content from.
SW-User
How about making "All posts viewable" a feature allowed to VIP members then or old regular users with so many coins?
It's the way to make real tangible benefits of those features while keeping your "more addicted" fanbase who considers your website as their home happy & contented.
Obviously they are the minority who cares most about this, and since it *is* a small minority there shouldn't be a problem with keeping new members/average users coming as per your vision and future plans with minimizing randomness. It's a win-win.
I've been following the growth of SW on webanalyzing tools like SimilarWeb and in October it says it hit 1M visits which is something grand as compared to last year when people expected the site to be "dying" with low page visits but you guys proved otherwise. I'm patient and I've never been against change for that reason but this time things are hitting me different.
Last few months the feed was marvelous imo. It's about finding the right balance.
@SW-User We will take your suggestions and feedback into consideration.
One important thing to mention (which I think we haven't said publicly before):
Post Impressions, Click-Through Rate and Time Spent on posts, ARE all factors which can impact user's future reach and post quality scores.
I understand that it can seem like a "No-Brainer", to simply provide to users who wish for it, the option to see ALL Posts made by ALL Users, however, there are numerous reasons as to why this is not a good idea.
To mention just a few:
1) Users seeing Irrelevant posts in their feed, and not clicking on them (even worse, Hiding or Downvoting them), can have a negative impact on the poster.
For that reason, it's our job to try to show user's posts mostly to those who might be positively interested. These factors and metrics have been implemented for some time now, not long after the Smart Feed was first introduced.
Even if it's a small % of users who have access to all posts, they being power users, would account for a significant % of feed impressions to all user's posts. which would skew Click-Through, Viewing-Time and Interaction data for the posters.
2) We have seen many users (even seasoned, power-users), leave negative, disparaging comments towards others who have different interests. There's no reason those posts should have been shown to them, in the first place.
I've seen interactions like this, happen to brand new users:
New User: "Hey, I'm interested in "xyz"! Anyone else? 🙂"
Seasoned User: "yeah... weird 😐"
(The new user does not feel welcomed here, and soon leaves SW)
While it may seem "Fun" to poke around and see what everyone else is talking about and interested in, many users don't join and post in particular groups, with the intent of Everyone seeing what they have posted.
Groups are intended to broadcast one's post to a targeted audience.
It does not provide privacy and a comfortable feeling, when user's posts are out in the open for everyone else irrelevant, to see.
3) If some user chose to "Scrape All Posts" on SW, and publish them on some other website... Of course, we the Admins would be the ones blamed, for making that so easily accessible.
No serious social networking website, should provide a complete and easy to access list of all posts being made, in chronological order.
There are many ways in which that can be exploited.
SW-User
Ok. I have a better understanding of the reasoning now.
For the time being if you could give us the option to move the New (💥) tab as it is to the left handside instead of the default feed it would be great, like a quick handy fix.
As for the previous suggestion, maybe not total visibility due to the concerns you mentioned but a significantly larger %. Say the current scope is 25% of the total feed in average. The improved VIP visibility is 50% (hypothetical numbers). If you can make it work in sync with the current algorithms as an added external factor regardless of interactions with users/topics.
Anyway thanks for taking the time to listen & clarify those point. @Andrew
@SW-User We've (just now) released another improvement that should reduce the number of posts from the same user appearing back-to-back in the Feed, for more extreme cases. Hopefully that will do it now :)
