Your Facebook feed is about to get slightly less infuriating. No, your friends aren't going to spontaneously start believing the same things you do. Facebook has decided to end sponsored stories. Those are the posts that float to the top of your feed informing you that one of your friends has interacted with a brand or product on Facebook. Well, no more.

You won't stop seeing sponsored stories right away. Facebook has stopped accepting any new ad buys for sponsored stories, but the ones already in place will continue running until April 9th. This applies to the website and in-app ads.

The response to sponsored stories from users was largely negative, but advertisers seemed to like it. The change could have something to do with the legal and regulatory scrutiny Facebook experienced as a result of the program. Many people don't expect their activity to become an ad for everyone else to see. Facebook announced a few other changes to targeting and ad implementation at the same time. You can find all the (less interesting) details on that at the links below.

[Facebook, MarketingLand]