Facebook is one of the most well-known tech companies in existence. One way that this company has continued to grow is through offering an incredibly innovative social media service. That being said, even the largest companies make mistakes every now and then. Facebook recently announced that their one of these plans to offer more than one news feed to users has been scrapped.
Since last year, this company has been running tests concerning Facebook users from six separate countries by changing how their respective news feeds are displayed. As a result of this plan, these users would have non-promoted posts moved to a separate feed from their main news feeds. This plan was seen as a way to possibly have users connect in a closer manner with friends and family. Unfortunately for Facebook, the results were negative and users didn’t like switching between separate news feeds.
Tech website Gizmodo reports that this experimented was conducted in Sri Lanka, Slovakia, Bolivia, Guatemala, Cambodia, and Serbia. In addition, certain legitimate news websites were pushed lower on Facebook news feed results as a result of this experiment. One major Slovakian news reported a 30% decrease in engagement from Facebook users throughout the duration of this news feed testing period.
In closing, any plans that Facebook might have had for presenting users with separate news feeds have backfired. This plan originally took place throughout six countries. Facebook users would access a separate tab called the explore feed in order to see non-promoted posts. The results of this experiment found that users did not give Facebook the results this company was expecting. Users reported not enjoying having to switch between multiple tabs to access content that used to be within one main feed. In addition, certain legitimate news websites felt that this experiment presented them in a negative light which resulted in a drop of overall Facebook user engagement for certain websites.
Dil Bole Oberoi
