Publishers who want a place in Facebook users' hearts will have to learn to be part of the family.

New rankings for the social media platform's News Feed give priority to friends and family... and the stories they are likely to share.

In two announcements this week, Facebook has outlined how this may affect publishers.

Engineering director Lars Backstrom says changes to News Feed rankings aim to ensure users don't miss stories from friends. "Our top priority is keeping you connected to the people, places and things you want to be connected to," he says.

An update that sought to place stories posted directly by friends higher up in News Feed has been extended to make sure users don't miss updates friends.

"We anticipate that this update may cause reach and referral traffic to decline for some pages," he says, with specific impact on distribution and other metrics depending on the composition of an audience.

"For example, if a lot of your referral traffic is the result of people sharing your content and their friends liking and commenting on it, there will be less of an impact than if the majority of your traffic comes directly through page posts."

Notes from product management vice president Adam Mosseri also give additional insights into News feed principles.

"People expect the stories in their feed to be meaningful to them -- and we have learned over time that people value stories that they consider informative," he says, adding that Facebook is "not in the business of picking which issues the world should read about".

"Our integrity depends on being inclusive of all perspectives and view points, and using ranking to connect people with the stories and sources they find the most meaningful and engaging."

However, don't expect this to be the final version: "We view our work as only one per cent finished - and are dedicated to improving along the way," says Mosseri.