Facebook: No Plans to Split News Feed Globally

Facebook currently has no plans to split the news feed. The company is conducting a test in some countries with dividing the feed into a separate section for messages from friends and a section for business messages from companies.

The test concerns a feed with messages from people you know and a second feed that is intended for pages that the user has liked. The news feed split has been tested for some time in Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Slovakia, Serbia, Guatemala and Cambodia. However, Facebook indicates that there are currently no plans to expand these tests to other countries.

The purpose of this test is to see if people prefer to have personal and public content separated in the news feed. Facebook indicates that users in the six countries have yet to provide feedback about the renewal. The company emphasizes that there are currently no plans to charge to get into the personal or business feed.

A Slovak journalist has said that 60 of the biggest Slovak media pages have been shared or liked significantly less, up to four times less, since the split. This has to do with the fact that when Slovakian users open Facebook, they only see posts from friends. They have to click on the ‘Explore Feed’ to see posts from pages the user is following. Perhaps companies will have to pay to become more visible and return to the personal feed.

Incidentally, the feed called Explore is also available in a few countries other than the six mentioned, but that is an additional feed with popular posts, videos and photos that is automatically compiled based on the possible interests of the user.