Facebook experiments with paid news stories in its feed

This week Facebook began experimenting with moving all non-promoted posts out of its primary feed into a secondary feed called the “Explore feed”. Affected publishers have reported up to 80% drop in engagement.

In a statement, Facebook said:

With all of the possible stories in each person’s feed, we always work to connect people with the posts they find most meaningful. People have told us they want an easier way to see posts from friends and family, so we are testing two separate feeds, one as a dedicated space with posts from friends and family and another as a dedicated space for posts from Pages.

As of now, the experiment is limited to Slovakia, Bolivia, Serbia, Guatemala, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka, with Facebook stating they have no current plans to roll this out globally.

For more reading on this developing topic, we recommend:

• The Guardian: Facebook moving non-promoted posts out of news feed in trial
• Recode: Publishers might have to start paying Facebook if they want anyone to see their stories
• City A.M: A Facebook news feed experiment splitting it in two is freaking out media publishers