Facebook’s Explore Feed Rolls Out To Desktop Version Of Social Networking Site

Facebook has an alternative to its standard News Feed, and it is one that showcases posts from accounts that are not, in any way, connected to the user. What this basically does is let users explore more content shared on the social networking site. The feature has long been made available to mobile, and it is now rolling out to Facebook’s desktop website.

On Wednesday, The Next Web’s director of social media Matt Navarra found out that the Explore Feed feature of the social networking site has already arrived on Facebook’s desktop site. The feature was previously available to mobile devices only, so it’s good to know that users on desktop now have access to it as well.

The Menlo Park, California-headquartered company has already confirmed that Explore Feed has now progressed to a full rollout. Hence, it’s only a matter of time until all desktop users from across the world can access the feature.

“We are beginning to roll out a complementary feed of popular articles, videos, and photos, automatically customized for each person based on content that might be interesting to them,” a Facebook representative told TechCrunch. “We’ve heard from people that they want an easy way to explore relevant content from Pages they haven’t connected with yet.”

For users who want to know if it has already reached their region, they should head to the Explore section in the left-hand sidebar of the desktop website. After clicking See More, they should find Explore Feed among the listed features like Events, Groups, Pages, Moments, Town Hall, Buy and Sell Groups, Jobs, Recommendations and more.

Just like what its name suggests, Explore Feed gives users the opportunity to explore other content shared on Facebook. The posts they will find in this feed are from companies, media sites, publishers and news organizations that they do not follow. This lets them discover content beyond the posts made by their friends and the Pages they follow.

Explore Feed does not display random content, however. The feature collects posts and information that are very similar to the ones that users already liked in their News Feed. They could also be content related to the stuff that’s quite popular among the user’s network of friends, as pointed out by MacRumors.

Facebook has been testing Explore Feed for some time now. Early this year, some users noticed a rocket ship icon on Facebook’s interface. The icon was eventually labeled Explore, and this has since been the name of the alternative feed. As of the moment, Explore Feed does not include advertising. However, it’s very likely that the feature could soon contain ads.

The main goal behind the creation of Explore Feed is believed to be related to Facebook’s goal of increasing the time users spend on its desktop website and mobile app. After all, increased time-on-site or time-in-app will allow Facebook to serve more ads in between videos and other content. Therefore, the Explore Feed could be another feature that Facebook is looking to monetize.