Facebook tests multiple news feeds on mobile

Instead of one main News Feed, social networking giant Facebook is said to be testing multiple, topic-based feeds on its mobile app. This will enable people to pull up streams of posts in various segments or categories including sports, food, health, animals, pets and more.

The new trend was first observed by Jason Stein on Twitter. The mobile app will automatically sort pages and posts and categorise them into different sections that the user follows. However, it does not completely eliminate the traditional News Feed. The secondary feeds will complement the main feeds.

A Facebook spokesperson told The Verge that based on feedback, the company has decided to test feeds, categorised into people and Pages, that are of interest to the user.

First, the user can check the regular News Feed, followed by secondary feeds based on his or her special interests like travel, style or politics. The new mobile design looks quite similar to that of Facebook’s Paper app.

Moreover, Facebook is aiming at a wider rollout of the Marketplace feature. The new design will replace the Facebook Messenger icon with the Marketplace icon. On both Android and iOS versions of the app, the Messenger icon will be pushed to the top. Some users in the US will be able to view the new layout on their mobile app.

The Marketplace tab also allows the user to search for items for sale without joining the "sale group." The feature shows great potential in making Marketplace feature a Craigslist competitor.

Earlier in October, as noted by Social Times, Facebook allowed some users to see special interest feeds on its desktop version. These categorised feeds would land on the users’ page from the relevant posts or pages that the user had liked.