The VKontakte feed is all about everything. VKontakte smart feed: how it works and how to get there

“Chief editor of the GetGoodRank blog, web analyst, blogger.
Smart Tape VK is formed based on the interests of users. We’ll talk about the factors by which the VK algorithm determines user interest in posts and ranks posts.”

The average user is subscribed to several hundred pages, groups and friends, from whom about 500 publications appear in his feed every day. Studies of audience activity on VK have shown that a person consumes no more than 20% of the information entering the feed. It's easy to miss in such a stream of publications important information. That is why the social network VK launched a smart feed. We tell you how the smart VK feed works and what its advantages are for publication authors.

The smart feed is controlled by a new post ranking algorithm, which calculates user interest in posts and places more interesting posts above the rest in the feed.

Observations of users who turned on the VK smart feed showed that their activity increased by an average of 20%, and the number of likes by 40%. Smart VK feed increases reach target audience for authors of publications.

Smart VK feed in action

VKontakte traditionally uses the method machine learning to form news feed users. The algorithm takes into account many factors to determine whether a post matches the user’s interests and where to show it in the feed.

Among the factors analyzed:

• user activity in comments
• like posts
• publication viewing time
• following links in publications
• reposts of posts
• user interaction with media files: audio, video, photos
• post marks “ It's not interesting” - this mark is of particular importance, since the action reduces the priority of other similar posts in the user’s feed.

Based on the acquired data, an individual order of entries in the news feed of each user is formed.

If the user activates the smart feed in desktop VK, then mobile devices the tape will connect automatically.

Conclusions

Changing the VK news feed taking into account user behavior once again proves that behavioral factors, quality user interface,accessibility of functions to the user becomes paramount to the ,success of a project on the web.

By default, the VKontakte news feed is a collection All possible updates from friends and groups. They get into it All new publications, uploaded photos, reposts, advertising.

Do you like the content of the feed?

If your feed has grown too large and among the many posts it is difficult to really find interesting materials, it's time to start cleaning.

From this article you will learn how to set up a VKontakte feed taking into account your interests, how to create “Favorites”, remove unnecessary messages, quickly see what your friends liked, and turn off auto-playing GIF animations.

What does the VKontakte feed consist of?

First, let's go to the feed and see what is where →

1. In the top field you can write something.
2. In the central part are the publications themselves. We'll tell you in what order a little later.
3. On the right is the menu. This is what will help you customize your feed.
4. Below the menu there is a “smart ribbon” switch.

VKontakte uses two modes selection news to feed:

• chronological (top - newest publications)
• “smart feed” mode (at the top are the most interesting publications).

With chronological everything is clear. But "smart tape" requires clarification. The internal algorithm of VKontakte analyzes the behavior of users in communities.

Taken into account:

• activity of the user and his friends in the comments
• number of views of photos and videos in community albums and on the wall
• likes and reposts
• community news viewing time
• number of link clicks
• other indicators (information from the official VKontakte blog).

The more active a user is in a community, the more useful and interesting this community is (according to the selection principles embedded in the algorithm). This means that the news from this community deserves to be included in the top positions in the feed.

Smart Tape mode is enabled by default. But if you don’t rely too much on the VKontakte mechanisms and want to choose what news to read, move lever 4 (see the picture above) and configure the feed manually.

How to create your “Favorites” on VKontakte

Easily organize your bookmarks in your browser or Evernote. But few people know that VKontakte also has such a function. You can create your own in the feed newsgroups:

• by topic (for example, all news from content marketing communities)
• by friends lists (for example, all news from colleagues)
• by selected friends (for example, all the news from the trainers of the Academy of Correct Copywriters).

Surely you will come up with other options. This is done like this:

1. Click the plus sign in the right menu (see picture).

1. In the menu that opens, select “Add Tab”. You will see a window like this. Come up with new group news title.

1. In this list at first all yours are withdrawn Friends, then - all groups and pages. Next to each item there is an empty circle for a check mark. Check the box for the groups where they publish materials on the selected topic, and all new publications from these groups will be reflected in the created tab (in the right menu), and other posts will not appear there.

1. In the “Actions” drop-down menu, you can select only groups or only friends, and then act by elimination, unchecking unnecessary boxes. Don't forget save changes(button below the list)!

1. The tab you created is customizable. To do this, you need to press the plus sign again, and then press the gear next to the name of the tab in the menu. You can delete the tab there. Tracking news has now become easy!

How to find out what your friends liked

In the same menu (by clicking on the plus sign on the right) there are several more interesting features. For example, viewing only photos. Or news from friends.

If you check the “Like” box and then select it in the menu, then in your feed you will see posts, photos and videos that you or your friends have liked or commented on.

You can customize this feed using a filter.

Of course, if your posts meet article quality criteria, the likelihood of receiving likes and comments increases significantly.

How to remove unnecessary messages from your feed

Not all news is equally useful. If you want save subscription on a community or person, but their publications you don’t need them in your feed, you can use extra messages put away. This is done like this:

1. In the right menu, already familiar to us, there is a funnel icon between the word “News” and the plus sign. This is a filter. Click on it and you will get this window:

It is similar to the tab customization window and works the same way. Only here the entire list of friends and groups is initially shown.

1. Uncheck those groups (or friends) whose news you don’t need in your feed.

1. If you uncheck the “Show copies” checkbox (below), then reposts will no longer appear in your feed.

1. Save changes.

How to disable automatic playback of GIF animations

I don’t argue that GIF pictures (those that move) can be very interesting. They attract attention. That’s why advertisers love GIFs. But I prefer that only those files that I launch myself are played. Are you too?

In the new VKontakte feed all animated images default made large and “self-playing”. That is, they do not require activation by clicking the mouse. And the feed may suddenly start showing a mini-video.

If you are not happy with this situation, you need to disable autoplay of GIF animation. This is done simply:

1. Go to the menu (arrow next to your avatar, displayed in the upper right part of the page)

1. Select “Settings” and immediately go to the “General” tab (see picture)

1. In the second paragraph - “Page Settings” - you need uncheck"Automatically play GIF animations"

1. Ready. Changes to page settings are saved themselves.

In fact, you can quickly set up your VKontakte feed. It's enough to do it all once with your own hands. Let's start right now→

1. Select a topic (for example, copywriting)
2. Create a newsgroup tab in your feed
3. Title it
4. Gather thematic communities there
5. Save changes
6. See how it works!

Did everything work out for you? Write in the comments which newsgroup you created first. And, of course, ask questions.

Get handy tool article quality assessment

Good afternoon everyone. In today's article we will talk about news and news feed on VKontakte. If we talk in simple words, then any users of the social network, as well as groups and public pages can create news that, after publication, ends up in the feed. If we are subscribed to communities and friends, then all their posts end up in our feed, and we find out what new has happened in the life of a particular user or group.

VKontakte News

What is news in social network VKontakte? Essentially, this is any user or community. After you have created a post and clicked the “Submit” button, your post becomes news and appears in the feed of your friends and subscribers. A social network is essentially information portal too, since there is a constant exchange of information between users and groups.

In fact, news is not only a means of transmitting information, but also powerful tool promoting user and group pages. Imagine that you are a professional photographer. Every day you post yours (for example, wedding ones) on your wall. People like your photos, like them and share them on their page. Gradually, you get more, and your page, thanks to likes, occupies a higher position in the search. At some point, you can post on the page information about the provision of photographer services - and now you have customer base. Communities and public pages are promoted in exactly the same way.

In fact, the main ones are communication and information exchange. In order to start the process of exchanging information or promoting a page or community, you need to learn how to do simple things - create interesting news and distribute them on a social network. Let's talk about it below...

How to add news

All posts are created on your own or someone else’s wall (or community wall). After the entry is added, it goes to the feeds of friends and subscribers and becomes news itself. We talked about how to create a record in the article. You can add any recording (photos, videos, music, documents, etc.).

You can create news from your own page...

...and from the “News” section. The type and principle of creation are the same in both cases. Even if you add a post using the second method, it is still published on your wall.

How to repost a post on VK

1. Find the post you need or like on the wall of a community or friend.

2. Click on the speaker icon in the lower field of the post (the counter of those sharing the post is also shown there, and in the pop-up window you can see who exactly shared the post.

If you wish, you can add a comment or attachment (photo, video, music, etc.) to the reposted post.

After the code is inserted onto your site, the post will look like this.

VKontakte news feed

As we have already said, after a post is added to a user’s or community’s wall, it immediately appears in the feed. The feed is located in the “News” section of the main menu.

All events in the feed appear in chronological order– i.e. the most recent (fresh) ones are on top. Since most users have many friends and subscribers, and they are also members of many groups, the feed is updated quite often. You need to somehow navigate this abundance of information, which is why a powerful set of selection, sorting and search tools has been invented for the feed.

Sorting news in the feed

Look - to the right of the feed is the feed menu.

For now, all our news is, one might say, in the “heap.” But in such an array of information it is difficult to find something that interests you, especially if you have not looked at the feed for several days, but you know that during this time a lot of interesting things happened with your friends. Here in the menu we can, for example, sort the posts of groups and friends by type. For example, show only:

There is also a filter for updates that appears in the section below the main menu. With it you can filter your friends' updates.

For example, you are only interested in the following updates:

2. What new communities did they join?

To do this, you need to leave only the appropriate checkboxes in the list of filters - that’s all.

This way, you can choose only the information that is interesting to you.

How to show only interesting news? Smart feed VKontakte

To enable the smart feed, you just need to activate switch “Interesting first” under the ribbon menu (by default it is in the “On” position).

What is a “smart” VK feed? Using special algorithms, it analyzes your actions and calculates what you like and is most interested in. To calculate what is most interesting for you, all your likes, views of posts and photos from videos, comments, etc. are calculated. Based on this, a feed is built with the most interesting entries ahead. This is also very useful and saves time for social network users.

Search by news

Sometimes in the abundance of information you need to find something specific and important. If we were just rummaging around the wall looking for the right post, then they would probably go crazy. For this purpose, there is a flexible search tool with various settings.

Select the “Search” section in the menu and then in search bar enter the keyword. But it often happens that one keyword or the phrase is not enough, and then the advanced feed search comes to our aid. To do this, you need to activate the “Search options” drop-down list.

In the advanced options, you can enable sorting by message type, attachment type, number of likes, and other parameters. As a rule, using advanced options it is not difficult to quickly find the news you need.

How to hide news in VK feed

VK has flexible settings for sorting and displaying posts in the feed. If desired, you can show and hide posts from specific people and groups. These settings are here...

After clicking on the funnel icon, we go to the window where we can mark the posts of which friends and communities we do not want to see in the feed. By default, all friends and groups have a checkmark next to them (that is, all their posts are displayed in the feed). This is not always convenient, as it clogs the feed with all sorts of unnecessary information.

To selectively hide news in the VK feed, just uncheck the user or community in this list. After this, the selected friend or group will be blacklisted (they will be displayed in the “Not shown” tab), and posts from them will no longer be displayed in the general feed.

In this way we can protect ourselves from unnecessary information garbage in the feed.

How to create your own VKontakte feed

On VKontakte you can also create tabs where . For example, you can select two or three people or several communities whose posts are most important and interesting to you, and add all posts from them to the tab. At any time, you can quickly see all the news from selected people or groups without sifting through all the information in your feed.

To create a tab, you need to click on the plus sign icon in the menu and select “Add tab” from the drop-down list.

After this, the “Most Interesting!” tab will appear in the menu list. By selecting it, you will be able to view posts only from the “Looking for you Nizhny Novgorod” group you selected.

The news feed of the social network VKontakte contains posts from friends, groups and communities to which you are subscribed. Previously, all posts were displayed in chronological order - that is, new posts occupied the first places, and old ones gradually moved down. In the summer of 2016, the social network introduced the VKontakte smart feed and ranking of posts. Now the posts that you like are included in your feed, and they are not displayed in chronological order.

You can turn off the VKontakte smart feed. In the feed settings, uncheck the “Interesting first” line and return to the usual chronological version of the feed.

How does the VKontakte smart feed work?

The VKontakte smart feed is a complex algorithm that is constantly learning. It evaluates your reaction and the reaction of other social network users to certain posts and shows those that receive positive reactions. The smart feed does not show posts that you reacted negatively to.

The smart feed contains:

• records of communities and groups in which you are active - like, leave comments;
• posts from accounts with which you often interact - write messages, leave likes and comments on the wall;
• posts that have been commented on or liked by your friends, as long as they have good social proof;
• posts in the format you like - for example, video collections, long text, pictures.

Let's look at each of the examples in more detail.

Posts from groups and communities. The more often you are active in the public, the more of its posts will appear in your feed. Posts from groups that you hardly ever visit will gradually disappear from the news.

Posts from accounts you interact with. If you turn on the smart feed, it will not contain posts from friends with whom you hardly communicate. And vice versa - if you actively interact with the user, you will see his publications.

Posts that friends interacted with. The rule of social proof comes into play here. The more reposts, comments and ratings a post your friend likes has, the more likely it is to appear in your news feed.

Posts of the format you like. The Smart Feed constantly evaluates your actions. If you like collections of tracks most often, she will give priority to such posts in the future. If you like long articles, they will gradually rise in the feed above other formats.

How to get to the top VKontakte feeds

We've prepared some tips to help you increase your post coverage.

Publish unique content

On June 1, 2018, appeared on the social network. It protects unique content from copying. The principle of operation of the algorithm is simple - it finds the original source, that is, the group in which the post was first published, and gives preference to it when publishing. All other things being equal, posts from the original source will rank higher in the smart feed.

To consistently publish unique posts, create a content plan. Write down what you will talk about and when, what additions you will use - photos, videos, GIF animation. If you have to use non-unique content, dilute it with your own preview, announcement, description. Completely copied posts will also be shown in the feed, but much lower than unique posts.

Motivate your subscribers to be active

It happens that people like the content and read it with pleasure, but do not like or comment on the posts. In this case, posts in subscribers’ feeds will appear less and less often, even despite large number views.

To avoid this, motivate your subscribers to be active. This can be done in different ways:

• Ask to like the post if you liked it at the end of each publication.
• Ask an easy question that will take a couple of minutes or seconds to answer.
• Touch on “hype” topics that are expected to cause a lot of discussion - for example, talk about flayers of a suitable target audience.
• Hold competitions for likes, reposts or comments with valuable prizes - the better they are, the more people will take part.

Be careful with “hype” topics. If followers react negatively and hide the post, you may lose reach.

Another way to create activity in a group is.

Evaluate statistics

Study group or account statistics - they are available from the moment the page is created. Several parameters are important here:

Focus on quality, not quantity

Previously, to increase your reach, it was enough to publish posts frequently. And it didn’t matter what quality they were. Now, according to representatives of VKontakte, infrequent but interesting posts receive more coverage. “Infrequent” in their understanding are publications that come out once every 2–3 hours: this is clearly visible in the screenshot.

By posting less frequently than usual, you get extra time for their preparation. This will improve the quality of content, which means it will indirectly push the updated smart feed to the top.

Look for the latest news

You should not touch on topics that were relevant a week, month, year ago. The “fresh” the topic for the news, the better it will be received by the target audience and the VKontakte smart feed. This is due to the algorithm: all other things being equal, posts published later are shown higher. That is, if you and your competitors publish the same posts and get approximately the same number of likes, but you publish the post a little later, it will be shown higher in the feed: the chronological order is maintained here.

Another tip is to use hashtags from the “ Hot Topics"if they are relevant. Posts with relevant hashtags usually get more reach than posts without hashtags, even if the content is the same.

Use promotion tools

The younger your page or group, the fewer people they see her. And to get to the top of the news feed, you need to show the posts to many subscribers. It turns out to be a vicious circle. Therefore, you can use paid promotion tools - for example, posts in large communities. This will help increase the number of followers and collect social proof, which will affect the ranking of posts in the feed.

What will you do or are already doing to make the VKontakte smart feed help with promotion? Share with us in the comments!

The owners of VKontakte seem to be flirting with SMM specialists, offering to independently find clues that would help them understand exactly how the ranking of posts in the feed and recommendations works. This approach, in principle, has the right to life, because if we thoroughly know all the features of the algorithm, we can easily manipulate it. So we have to monitor the media space, trying to assemble a puzzle from scattered statements. It’s good that at least sometimes large-scale leaks happen, like the one that was the reason for creating of this material. Today’s article is based on an interview with VK’s Director for Growth and Research, Andrei Zakonov, and Director for Development of the Social Network’s Media Ecosystem, Sergei Paranko.

How does the VKontakte smart feed work?

First, let's look at the basis on which recommendations are formed for a particular user. The first thing you need to realize is that the system prioritizes the interests of the average content consumer. You will say: “There is nothing new here, this is how search engines do it, this is how context targeting works.” However, VK went further, trying to take into account factors that change dynamically.

Example 1. A man went to the country and monitors updates through an ancient, slow tablet with mobile internet, the speed of which also leaves much to be desired. The social network sees this and sends posts with bulky videos and GIF animations to the very bottom of the feed, even if the posts are 100% relevant to a specific individual.

Example 2. As a rule, during the working day people prefer short and succinct publications (for example, news, memes, etc.), and in the evening they can afford to read longreads. This is also taken into account and posts that the user is most likely to read “here and now” are displayed in the top.

In other words, the VKontakte smart feed algorithm takes into account not just the quality of the post, but also how a particular user will interact with it. This significantly complicates the work of SMM specialists, because now you need to more deeply understand the preferences of the target audience, and not just segment subscribers by gender, age, profession and other socio-demographic characteristics, as before. Now this measure seems redundant, but given the rapid development of artificial intelligence technologies, it is better to be prepared!

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Separately, it is worth commenting on example No. 1. Yes, quality network connection and the performance of the client device play a role, but don’t think that adding compressed jpgs and low-resolution videos to posts will help increase coverage and demonstrate content even to owners of “calculators”. As before, in its work, the VKontakte smart feed gives preference to images with a width of at least 510 pixels and videos in HD and higher. Thus, by lowering the quality of multimedia, you will, on the contrary, reduce coverage.

It’s also worth dispelling a myth regarding text content: there are no restrictions on the size of articles. If you want to convey the latest news to your audience, write succinctly and concisely, but when it comes to something large-scale, the main thing is to reveal the topic. The only caveat: for longreads it is best to use VKontakte’s own HTML editor, added on January 23, 2018. To use it, just click on the inconspicuous icon in the post creation menu.

This tool greatly simplifies working with text due to the fact that:

● drafts are saved automatically - you will never lose valuable information;
● formatting is also automated (for example, the editor selects the optimal indents for paragraphs and helps create a beautiful preview);
● articles meet the requirements search engines(the hierarchy of headings h1, h2, etc. is observed) - they are indexed as well as pages on regular sites.

Another important nuance regarding wiki markup: this format is considered purely desktop, therefore materials created with its help are, in principle, not displayed in “Recommendations” mobile application VK. This needs to be taken into account if the vast majority of your target audience uses portable gadgets.

In addition, the VKontakte smart feed algorithm does not impose a penalty on content of “special” content (for example, erotic) - all the same rules apply to it as, for example, to pictures with cats. There is also no pre-moderation: you are free to post in a group or public any information that is not prohibited by the legislation of the Russian Federation or user agreement social networks. However, do not forget that any reader can complain about a post, including if it contains false information (“fake news”). Applications are considered in manual mode, there is also no critical mass of complaints upon reaching which the entry is deleted.

How to get the fire of Prometheus on VKontakte?

At the beginning of the year, VK launched an algorithm designed to help authors of original content gain fame. It works like this: neural network searches and analyzes publications, assessing both their quality and reader reaction. By classifying what is found, artificial intelligence adds posts to recommendations for users who may be potentially interested in them. Moreover, even indirect contact with the original source is optional: a person may not even know about the existence of a particular group and may not have friends who are members of it.

The flagged material receives priority in the search results, which helps increase coverage. After a week, the tag can be reassigned (but to a different post), and so on ad infinitum. Here's what you need to know about the new algorithm:

1. The popularity of the community in absolute terms does not matter

The main thing is user engagement. If a post of 100,000 people is published that is of interest to at most a hundred people, the system will not pay attention to it. At the same time, small group with an audience of about 1500 can claim the coveted light if 90% of subscribers like the new post. This is proven by practice: in different times, along with such popular projects as VDud and Duran, Prometheus was received by the folk ensemble SHEDDA (just over 2000 participants), the Canceled public page dedicated to canceled games (the number of subscribers recently exceeded 6000) and even personal account extreme photographer Alexander Fedorov (about 2000 subscribers).

2. The popularity of the topic does not matter

There is a myth that AI gives preference only to niches that are interesting to a wide range of users. The same aforementioned Canceled belongs to the gaming industry and can be classified, while something out of the ordinary will not be noticed by a robot: it simply will not be able to determine to whom to recommend the find.

This is also a misconception: the VKontakte “Prometheus” algorithm tries to build associative chains, anticipating what could potentially be of interest to regulars of the site. Thanks to this, posts like this once appeared in the feeds of many people.

The author of the community, as the name suggests, is dedicated to trying out the hairstyles of anime characters on trams. Artificial intelligence appreciated the extraordinary idea, which is difficult to attribute to any genre of art, and provided the project with free advertising.

3. Prometheus only considers native content

In the context of VKontakte, this means material created specifically for the social network and uploaded to a public page or group. Announcements of two or three sentences, accompanied by embeddings, are naturally not taken into account by the algorithm. The system is fully automated and can only access the content that is uploaded to the VK servers. Therefore, if you want to get fire, you must:

● write original materials using the VK editor;
● use community albums to upload pictures;
● add video and audio to your own social network player;
● conduct streams on the VK LIVE platform.

4. Unlike the VKontakte smart feed algorithm, there are unacceptable topics for Prometheus

There are two of them: adult (not only pornography, but also erotica) and shock content of any nature that can cause rejection from most people (for example, filming of surgical operations). In addition, the system rejects deliberately “junk” communities created solely for the sale of advertising space, so you should not abuse the placement of promotional posts.

5. Prometheus helps attract new subscribers

Another common misconception is that the algorithm, although it helps to increase reach (on average it increases 10 times), however, attracts an inert audience without helping to increase the subscription base. Sergei Paranko refutes this with the following figures.

As we can see, the dynamics are positive, but a lot depends on the topic, the quality of other posts and the frequency of their publications. Obviously, no one will subscribe to a half-dead public page, but a community where exclusive photos from space are posted will be of interest more people than the group dedicated to the pre-revolutionary interiors of St. Petersburg. Therefore, having received the coveted Prometheus on VKontakte, be prepared to start working closely with a new audience, just as illustrator Anton Andreev did.

Having been noticed by the AI, he was not too lazy to create a welcome comic, which served landing page for all new arrivals, and also increased the frequency of publications. The result is over 25 thousand subscribers as of July 2018, which is an excellent result for private group, the owner of which did not use commercial promotion methods (targeted advertising or custom posts in thematic communities).

Let's summarize

Now you know almost everything you need about the Prometheus algorithm and the VKontakte smart feed successful promotion communities. In any case, everything that can be found in open sources. Of course, no one will publish a list of factors that the neural network takes into account when calculating the relevance of posts: in this case, targeted advertising would lose all meaning, and it is precisely on this that social networks live. But besides that, they live thanks to the creativity of users: without articles, memes and videos, VK would be just another messenger, and, moreover, not the most convenient. In turn, content makers need an audience that can truly appreciate the fruits of their labor, preferably in a freely convertible equivalent. And as long as such mutual need exists, you and I certainly will not be left without work.