Facebook is conducting a somewhat controversial test: dividing the News Feed into two sections. A section dedicated to the updates of your friends and another section, called Explore, which contains posts from Pages.
For now, the test, which will last a few months, is taking place in six countries: Bolivia, Cambodia, Guatemala, Serbia, Slovakia and Sri Lanka. It is a Facebook response to users needing to view messages from friends and family more easily.
The controversy here comes from the data: in the six countries where the test is being conducted, the interaction with the Pages has decreased between 60 and 80% and many companies have Facebook Pages that they use to communicate with their audience or to promote themselves. This is controversial because if nobody is interacting with company Facebook pages there is only one-way for them to promote their businesses on Facebook. Paid advertising. A large company would have no problem funding these advertising campaigns but small companies, with tight budgets, would be in trouble.
Facebook has had to clarify a few things. For now, there are no plans to permanently divide the Feed into two sections; there are also no plans to extend the test to other countries or a plan to force Pages to pay to gain visibility.
“The objective of this test is to understand if people prefer to have separate spaces for personal content and public content,” explains the Facebook executive. “We will listen to what people say about this experience to know if it is an idea that deserves to be developed in more depth.”
Although this clarification will calm some, we have forgotten that the companies in these six countries, however small, are already suffering economically because of this test.
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Via: Betanews, Telegraph, Zdnet
