Facebook has announced that it is again experimenting with the makeup of the Newsfeed, hoping to drive more traffic back to news sites.

Earlier this year Facebook altered the Newsfeed to highlight trending topics based on keywords such as ‘Christmas’ and ‘Cup Final’, letting users know what big issues their friends were talking about, whilst also condensing the posts to reduce clutter in their feed.

But change may well be coming again as the social site seeks to build upon the rise in popularity of news apps coming from outlets such as The Guardian, Yahoo! and Huffington Post.

The new format will increase readership for the sites which make their articles available via the Newsfeed, but Facebook users have a tendency to react badly to change – especially when that change starts taking up large sections of their screen.

Time will tell; the project may well be abandoned before it even reaches your screen, but it could be one of the biggest steps this year in the drive towards making news social, and making it digital.