Facebook discontinues failed split News Feed experiment
What's the story
After learning that users didn't like two separate News Feeds, one for family/friends and another for commercial pages, Facebook has ended its Explore Feed test.
It started the experiment in October 2017 in six countries — Bolivia, Guatemala, Cambodia, Slovakia, Serbia and Sri Lanka.
However, FB soon found that people were less satisfied with the change and it didn't really help them connect more.
Explained
What was Explore Feed?
According to Adam Mosseri, Head of News Feed at FB, the Explore Feed was a trial response to people's demands of wanting to see more from friends and family in their News Feed.
The idea was to create a Facebook version with two different News Feeds: one for posts from friends/family and another for posts from Pages, he wrote in a blog post.
Details
Mark Zuckerberg sold about $500 million Facebook shares in February
Meanwhile, to fund his philanthropic arm, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg sold about $500 million in the tech giant's shares last month.
According to two security filings on Thursday, Zuckerberg sold 685,000 shares worth $125.4 million between 26-28 February. The move takes his total sales in February to $482.2 million for about 2.7 million shares, reported Reuters.
Plans
Zuckerberg to sell 35-75 million FB shares in 18 months
The decision takes forward Zuckerberg's plan to boost FB stock sales to fund CZI, which he started with wife Priscilla Chan.
In September 2017, Zuckerberg announced he'd sell 35-75 million Facebook shares in the next 18 months, raising up to $13 billion.
Notably, Zuckerberg had pledged to donate 99% of FB shares to CZI when it was founded in 2015.