Mark Zuckerberg recently stated that Facebook is optimizing its newsfeed algorithm, so that the experience will be better for the users – not the businesses.

Now, Facebook has launched a tool that hopefully can benefit all parties.

The new tool is an upgraded version of the “hide this post”-function. Besides making it easier to unfollow people or pages, it also shows the summary of who you’ve the watched the most, both people and businesses pages. Facebook’s hope is that it will encourage people to give more feedback to Facebook, and thereby make it easier for Facebook to improve the “Facebook-experience” for each individual user.

I think, we have all thought about cleaning up our newsfeed and unfollow the pages (or friends?) who turned out to be quiet an annoying, digital acquaintanceship. However, this has been equal to a large amount of work, which has prevented people (or at least me) from doing it.

I see this tool as a step in the right direction for Facebook, not only for the individual users, but in particular for businesses. After Facebook have begun to implement a decreasing organic reach – Zuckerberg calls it a more optimized newsfeed – businesses have been struggling with low engagement rates, but this could change it. That does however imply that Facebook is successful in promoting this new tool.

If people starts to unfollow the pages which they in fact don’t find interesting, it could lead to a decrease in the average number of fans, but at the same time an increase in the engagement rate, as the pages would now only reach dedicated fans.

It will probably be a long time before we reach this point – and we may never reach it – but this is definitely a step in the direction.