Back in the day when Facebook was still relatively new, the News Feed was pretty simple and straightforward, where it would display content sorted by time, meaning that the latest posts would be on the top, while older posts would be pushed to the bottom. Since then Facebook has made several changes to way the News Feed is displayed.
However it seems that Facebook still isn’t done experimenting with its News Feed yet because the company has recently announced that they are testing out the idea of splitting the News Feed into two. One would be purely personal news, as in posts from friends and family members and colleagues, while the other would be for commercial posts, like those from businesses.
How does this differ from the current News Feed? The current feed is based on posts that you have liked/read before, or based on people that you follow and what Facebook determines is the most relevant and of interest to you. However the downside to this particular sorting is that sometimes posts made by friends can be lost in the clutter of posts from brands/companies that you follow, and vice versa.
As it stands, this testing is currently being conducted in six countries: Bolivia, Cambodia, Guatemala, Serbia, Slovakia and Sri Lanka and is expected to go on for a few months. However as noted by Adam Mosseri, the Head of News Feed at Facebook, this testing does not necessarily mean that it will be launched as a feature in the future.
Mosseri clarifies, “The goal of this test is to understand if people prefer to have separate places for personal and public content. We will hear what people say about the experience to understand if it’s an idea worth pursuing any further. There is no current plan to roll this out beyond these test countries or to charge pages on Facebook to pay for all their distribution in News Feed or Explore.” However it is an interesting concept, but what do you guys think?
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