What’s your status, today?
Just as you’re about to type what is second nature to you, notice something different?
After you’ve spent a few minutes hitting yourself on the head, saying “there goes Facebook changing again”! Pause and take a moment to understand why this is happening. Facebook’s platform has engagement experts who are using the influx of response data to make you keep coming back for more, each time! Over 150 million users are reportedly spending 50 minutes a day per year* and that has led Facebook to experiment with a little rocket tab that may or may not have come on your profile yet.
This tab takes you to a listing of posts that have articles, images, videos – from sources that the user may not be following but Facebook deems that the user would want to see. Similar to Twitter’s ‘Explore’ feed, Facebook uses vast data inputs to bring content together that is much more relevant to the user. This is outside the algorithm-defined News Feed so that it is a differentiator for the user.
The idea has not been completely perfected, but it is in a testing mode – it becomes an easy way for people to explore content that might be interesting.
Facebook has tried this before – Mashable reported that a secondary News Feed was tried on Android earlier this month.
The experts at the social media organisation are working hard to fulfil the need of finding real-time and relevant content that users today are always looking out for. So when you log on to only check your friend’s statuses, but something is stirring in your mind, and you start searching or reading content similar to that, it is possible to find a list of content links that may link back to what you were looking out for.
This engagement is especially relevant for brands to reach out to users on the social media platform. This becomes an avenue where brands can be ‘found’. There is the possibility of selling promoted content space with this tab, in case that is the direction Facebook wants to take.
As is often the case with Facebook, this is also something that might stay or might fade away. But it is heartening to know that it is aware of what it needs to do to make itself more relevant to users of today.
