Facebook officially launches Explore Feed on desktop to boost Pages’ posts

Facebook has made it hard for Pages to get their posts in people’s News Feeds, from cutting organic reach in favor of paid distribution to prioritizing posts from friends and family members. But it has added a new feed that may help brands and publishers recoup some of that lost reach.

This week, Facebook officially launched a new feed on desktop that presents people with posts from Pages they don’t follow and posts that aren’t likely to show up in their regular news feed.

It’s called Explore Feed and subtitled “top posts for you from across Facebook.” The company rolled out the alternative News Feed on mobile earlier this year. On both mobile and desktop, the Explore Feed can be found within the “Explore” menu that lists similar non-News Feed feeds, such as Trending News and City Guides.

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

At the moment, Facebook does not appear to be running ads within the Explore Feed. The company spokesperson declined to comment on whether Explore Feed will feature ads and whether brands will be able to target ads specifically to the feed.

About The Author

Tim Peterson

Tim Peterson, Third Door Media’s Social Media Reporter, has been covering the digital marketing industry since 2011. He has reported for Advertising Age, Adweek and Direct Marketing News. A born-and-raised Angeleno who graduated from New York University, he currently lives in Los Angeles. He has broken stories on Snapchat’s ad plans, Hulu founding CEO Jason Kilar’s attempt to take on YouTube and the assemblage of Amazon’s ad-tech stack; analyzed YouTube’s programming strategy, Facebook’s ad-tech ambitions and ad blocking’s rise; and documented digital video’s biggest annual event VidCon, BuzzFeed’s branded video production process and Snapchat Discover’s ad load six months after launch. He has also developed tools to monitor brands’ early adoption of live-streaming apps, compare Yahoo’s and Google’s search designs and examine the NFL’s YouTube and Facebook video strategies.