For many people, Facebook has become a prime point of contact for their time spent online. That is not stopping the company from continuing to explore ways to keep users on the site even more and trying to find ways to entice new users to get on-board. For example, they have launched a dedicated section for videos and the intention appears to be for that to become a source for original content only available through Facebook. Now the company is working on a way to get news junkies to stick around via a new Explore Feed.
The Explore Feed is a way for users to access content that does not show up in their regular news feed. Based on a quick comparison, it appears many of the top stories correspond to the the Trending block that is present on the web interface on the desktop site. Other stories that appear are selected using algorithms that look at a user’s preferences and interests. The Explore Feed differs from the regular News Feed in that it is not limited to friends, pages, and groups that a user has elected to follow.
The Explore Feed has actually been present for at least some users under the “More” tab in the mobile client. It is not accessible through the desktop. Based on feedback, it appears the stories that surface through the Explore Feed tend to be decent quality and useful.
That may be why Facebook is looking at making it even more of a key feature as revealed through some more client testing which is making a new Explore Feed tab available in the mobile client, at least for some Android users. If you happen to fall in the testing group, you may notice a new rocket ship icon available near the top of the mobile app. Tapping on that moves the user over to the Explore Feed where they can explore new content they may not have been exposed to in their regular news feed.
Facebook regularly tests new features and changes to the interface by quietly pushing them out to a limited number of their user base and then measuring how it gets used. Depending on how things go with the test of the Explore Feed and this dedicated access to it, Facebook could let it fade away, revise it in some major way, or we could see an announcement about this new feature when it officially launches.