Another day – another test. Facebook has confirmed it is working on a future test that would allow publishers to label their posts as “breaking news.”
Ever since Facebook launched its Explore feed and started testing a News Feed with no Page posts, many who publish content on the platform have been freaking out. Many of them have seen organic reach go down significantly over the last few years, and have thus seen the test as just another way for Facebook to shake more advertising dollars from them.
Despite their worries, Facebook actually cares about businesses – and publishers in particular. After all, it is their content that keeps billions of people occupied on the world’s largest social network. Organic reach has gone down over time as there are simply too many Pages fighting for attention. News Feed can’t possibly surface every single post, right? Right.
To further help news posts to stand out, Facebook is working on a test that will allow publishers to add a “breaking news” label to their posts. It is not clear what actual effect the indicator would have, and Facebook is being tight-lipped about it, but we can only assume that it would help those posts be more visible on News Feed – at least for a while. It is also possible that users could be alerted to such posts via a notification.
Nothing more is known about the feature, but a screenshot of it in action was shared by TNW’s director of social media, Matt Navarra.
NEW: Facebook working on a ‘Breaking News’ tag for news publishers Pages? pic.twitter.com/XnjwSzEVn3
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) November 3, 2017
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