Every so often when you come across articles explaining why your page posts only reach a certain percentage of users who like your page, the term algorithms pops up and are left relatively unexplained. And if you are like me, you remember learning about algorithms in school (vaguely), but you haven't had to use them in the 10 years since college, so you forget what they're used for. And you wonder why algorithms would be used in social media.
While algorithms is a math term, it is also used in programming and where social media is concerned, algorithms is a program used to determine who sees what percentage of posts you post to your various social media outlets.
Each social media tool has different ways to calculate how your users will see what percentage of your posts. This is called an algorithm. Facebook changes the name of theirs, the most recent one being Edge Rank and it determines not only how much you see from pages you like, but how much you see from friends based on how much you - and others - interact with your friends.
Most of these algorithms are based on user/friend engagement. If you see a page liking it's own post, or a friend liking their posts, it's likely not because they're being narcissistic, it's because they've read about how the algorithms work and if they want more of their friends or likes to see the post, they like it.
What's worse, is once you have the algorithms figured out for each form of social media, they often change.
TLDR version: Algorithms are formulas used by engines in social media to determine who sees what on their walls.
Wednesday Words are a series of definitions released on Wednesday each week regarding a word found specific to Facebook's social media platform, or may be a generic word dealing with social media. These definitions are to help provide you with a better understanding of common and uncommon terms associated with Facebook and social media. You can find all the Wednesday Words by clicking on the Wednesday Words tag below.
