Dive Brief:
- Facebook has expanded its Explore Feed to its desktop platform after a test run on the Facebook mobile app, according to TechCrunch.
- The feature aims to serve users content beyond posts from friends and followed Pages, including publishers and news organizations Facebook thinks a user may like based on past history, likes or what's popular among their network of friends.
- The Explore Feed has been in testing for over a year on mobile, and so far, it doesn't appear to include advertising, TechCrunch said. Users can find the feature on the left sidebar on the desktop platform and under the "more" menu navigation in the mobile app.
Dive Insight:
Facebook is largest social media platform with an audience of 2 billion, but it's eager to find new ways to keep those users engaged and inside its ecosystem as its platform continues to mature. The Explore Feed is Facebook's attempt to leveraging personally-curated content based on a user's interests to achieve those goals. As TechCrunch reported, it's also a second-tier news feed where Facebook could eventually serve more ads and drive more revenue.
The Explore tab might also open up opportunities for brands to promote sponsored content done in partnership with publishers that matches up with users' past searches and the pages they follow. The social media giant's core News Feed product is starting to run out of ad space to the point where cramming any more ads in would likely damage the user experience and turn people off.
While Facebook is clearing searching out new ways to pipe in content and help users discover those offerings, it's also attempting to give marketers a better window into how its users interact and respond to what they encounter. The company's reportedly starting to test letting brands study the content of users' posts and comments, which might provide a more direct line of social listening but could also run into privacy concerns.