Facebook experimenting with ‘Top Posts’ filter on Starbucks Page

Are the new filters appearing on the Starbucks Facebook Page tonight a mere glitch, an internal experiment, or a harbinger of things to come?

In a change first spotted by my LiveWorld colleague Mark Williams at 6:30pm Pacific Time, the traditional filters for sorting Wall posts (by the brand only, by the fans only, or by posts from brand and fans) have been replaced with these three options:

• “Top Posts” — A selection of relatively recent Wall posts that a Facebook algorithm has deemed of highest value.
• “Most Recent” — All Wall posts by the Page and fans/Likers, in reverse chronological order. Functions the same as the old “Starbucks + Others” filter.
• “Starbucks” — Just Wall posts by Starbucks. Functions the same as old “Just Starbucks” filter.

Some quick-hit thoughts and questions on the new Facebook Page filters

• More testing, but now with higher visibility? This isn’t the first time that Facebook has tested these new filters; All Facebook reported on a similar experiment last month. But it can’t be just a coincidence that this time around, Facebook is running this test on one of the highest-Liked Pages (Starbucks has more than 19 million Likers), and on the very same day that Starbucks announced it would be changing its logo.
• Not widespread. We can’t confirm the extent of the testing across Facebook Pages ecosystem, but it’s worth noting that none of the other Top 25-most-Liked Facebook Pages feature the new filters yet.
• How are “Top Posts” defined? It’s not exactly clear how the Facebook algorithm is selecting posts for the “Top News” filter — some of the choices seem very random — but a best guess is some combination of the post’s recency, along with the number of comments and likes it has generated. In the screenshot above, for example, my own comment to the Starbucks Wall, with five total comments, was displaying as the second “Top” post for about 30 minutes, before dropping off.
• Can Page admins highlight their favorite posts? What if “Top Posts” could also be filtered with some input from Page administrators, too, giving brands the power to make particular updates — whether their own, or from fans — “sticky”? This could help in optimizing content for the Facebook News Feed, and would continue to underscore the importance of Facebook moderation.
• What’s next? As is often the case when Facebook partially unveils a new feature or user-interface change, it’s difficult to know whether we’re seeing a short-term experiment that will go away (again), or if the new filters will be rolled out to all Facebook Pages. Stay tuned!