Today, when you go the News Feed on Facebook, you get access to everything – posts from your friends, pages, groups, videos, and more. But that may be about to change. Facebook is testing splitting up your feed, adding a Local feed for local content and events, and an Explore feed dedicated to your interests and hobbies. The idea is to provide more content that's relevant to you and an easier way to find it. These new Local and Explore feeds will be accessible via icons at the top of your Facebook nav, similar to how links to Videos and Marketplace are displayed currently.
The last time Facebook tested an Explore feed was in 2017, and it was a failure. The company completely separated posts from friends and family in one feed and posts from Pages and Groups into an Explore feed. And people didn’t want to have to check multiple feeds to get caught up.
Hopefully, Facebook has learned its lesson and isn’t removing the content from your main News Feed to go into Local and Explore, but simply adding another way to access it. Though, it remains to be seen how much value this will add for the typical user.
Let's take a closer look at what the Local and Explore tabs are and how they could affect your Facebook experience.
The Local tab: what’s going on in your neighborhood
Facebook aims to offer a single place where you could see all the events, group activities, and marketplace listings happening near you. If it works as intended, it could be useful if you're:
- New to an area and want to get to know your community
- Looking for weekend plans
- Interested in joining local groups or supporting small businesses
Facebook determines your location using a mix of GPS data, IP addresses, and your location check-ins. If you allow Facebook to track your location history, they use that information to refine their recommendations further. What's not clear is if Facebook is determining these recommendations any differently than they do today, or if the only meaningful change is the addition of a new nav button to get there. Currently, the new Local tab is being tested in Austin, New York City, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Chicago, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, San Francisco and Phoenix.
Read more: The Complete Guide to Facebook Privacy Settings
The new Explore tab: a deep dive into your interests
According to Facebook, the Explore tab will be unique to each person's interests. The company will use a wide variety of signals to power its algorithm, ensuring that the content you see reflects the things you're passionate about. I like bunny-related posts and watch cute rabbit videos, so I’d expect to see bunny content in my Explore tab. This could include adorable bunny pictures, care tips for rabbits, and bunny-related group recommendations.
On its face, this approach isn't fundamentally different from how your regular feed works today. So, we'll have to see how this changes when the new Explore feed is rolled out.
Read more: Social Media's Shocking Data Harvesting & Sharing Practices Exposed
The AI touch: a smarter experience?
A new tool that will be useful for any of your feeds will be AI Content Summaries. These summaries can provide a recap of long comment threads; instead of scrolling through hundreds of comments, you could get a quick overview. And for Facebook Groups, AI might help you quickly find answers to questions by pointing you to previous posts in the Group.
Why these potential changes matter to you
While the new Local and Explore tabs have promise, I’m always a little skeptical about any changes to Facebook. Like any business, Facebook has its own motivations. By making the platform more engaging, they hope you'll spend more time on it, which in turn allows them to generate more advertising revenue. But I am looking forward to the AI summaries. That’s a feature that could be actually helpful.
[Image credit: Screenshot via Meta, mockup of woman holding phone via Canva]
For the past 20+ years, Techlicious founder Suzanne Kantra has been exploring and writing about the world’s most exciting and important science and technology issues. Prior to Techlicious, Suzanne was the Technology Editor for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and the Senior Technology Editor for Popular Science. Suzanne has been featured on CNN, CBS, and NBC.
