According to several people I’ve spoken to, Facebook found during testing that users who were switched to the new News Feed tended to spend less time on the site. Specifically, they spent less time browsing areas outside of the News Feed, like their friends’ profiles and event pages, which are currently some of the most visited parts of Facebook. After an investigation into the problem by Facebook’s data team, they discovered that the new News Feed was performing too well. It was performing so well from a design standpoint that users no longer felt the need to browse areas outside of the News Feed as often, so they were spending less time on the site. Unfortunately, this change in user behavior led to fewer advertisement impressions, which led, ultimately, to less revenue.
Dustin Curtis in Whatever goes up, that’s what we do
Fascinating if true. Facebooks once famously introduced the news feed despite its function of decreasing page views in the short term. German competitors like studiVZ did not introduce something similar because they didn’t want to lose any precious page impression.
If Facebook reached a point where they don’t innovate on the news feed because it is too successful it is time to worry about the company.
It makes them ripe for disruption. Especially now with the shift to mobile where the greatest feed will win.
