Facebook adds Explore Feed under More menu in app, as it keeps testing a second customized feed from sources people haven't followed yet
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook's Explore Feed began as an experiment in April 2017, when the company tested a second News Feed marked with a rocket ship icon filled with posts from sources users hadn't liked. The move under the More menu is the next step in that arc — moving the un-followed-content feed from a test flag into the app's navigation while testing continues.
The placement matters because Facebook has a long history of probing multi-feed structures before committing: back in late 2015 it tested multiple topic-based feeds replacing the single main News Feed. Whether this one graduates depends on engagement, and the related coverage shows it eventually did roll out officially on desktop and mobile by October 2017 (the discovery-focused rollout).
First-order effects
- App users get a persistent entry point to a second customized feed of content from sources they haven't followed, sitting alongside the main News Feed under More.
- Publishers and Pages gain a potential new distribution surface for reaching audiences beyond their existing followers, without paid promotion.
Second-order effects
- If the test graduates to full rollout, as the later desktop-and-mobile launch suggests it did, the Explore Feed competes with the main News Feed for session time and reshapes how much organic reach flows through the primary feed.
- A dedicated discovery surface gives Facebook another inventory slot for ads and sponsored content, pressuring rivals for attention time — Omdia's data shows Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok already capture over 90% of social media ad revenue, so incremental surfaces defend that concentration.
Third-order effects
- The repeated pattern — 2015's topic-feed tests, 2017's Explore Feed, 2021's tap-to-explore topics under posts — points toward Facebook structurally splitting the single News Feed into multiple algorithmic discovery surfaces, each with its own ranking logic and monetization.
- If discovery feeds become permanent, publisher reach increasingly depends on algorithmic surfacing rather than follower graphs, shifting distribution power further toward platform-controlled recommendation.
The trend: Social platforms are fragmenting the single chronological-or-ranked home feed into multiple algorithmic discovery surfaces, with Facebook running the longest-running sequence of experiments in that direction.