New Face, News Feed

Facebook’s running some new tests of its News Feed in several countries, including Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Slovakia, Serbia, Guetemala, and Cambodia.

According to a post by its Head of News Feed, Adam Mosseri, “the goal of this test is to “understand if people prefer to have separate places for personal and public content.”

Uh, how about, “NO!” And why didn’t you just ask?!

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. Unfortunately, some have mistakenly made that interpretation — but that was not our intention.
– via media.fb.com

According to a story in The Guardian, the results don’t look promising for those who don’t wish to pay to play:

A new system being trialled in six countries including Slovakia, Serbia and Sri Lanka sees almost all non-promoted posts shifted over to a secondary feed, leaving the main feed focused entirely on original content from friends, and adverts. The change has seen users’ engagement with Facebook pages drop precipitously, with publications reporting a 60% to 80% fall [Emphasis added]. If replicated more broadly, such a change would destroy many smaller publishers, as well as larger ones with an outsized reliance on social media referrals for visitors.
– via the Guardian

Matti Littunen, a senior research analyst at Enders Analysis, was dubios about the move:

the move was “the classic Facebook playbook: first give lots of organic reach to one content type, then they have to pay for reach, then they can only get through to anyone by paying.”
– via the Guardian

 

And Filip Struhárik, a journalist with Slovakia’s Dennik N newspaper, got more to the point:

“Newsfeed without news. Just friends and sponsored content. People will find out how boring their friends are,”
– via the Guardian

I can’t wait to see what all my friends had for lunch again.