Facebook surprisingly combined two split apps into one user interface. News Feed and Story Feed can soon be accessed at the same time on one hybrid carousel.
A Twitter status update posted on April 15 by Jane Manchun Wong, a software engineer shows a video of the Facebook News Feed and Story Feed are shown together on the same UI. The video that runs a few seconds long shows the regular post and the FB user's story flashing one after the other without the user having to change windows.
Facebook is testing to turn News Feed into Story Feed pic.twitter.com/83H7VWcgmD — Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) April 15, 2019
The software engineer clarified that the video of the Facebook News Feed and Story Feed on the same hybrid carousel has no pause option. The video will keep playing so the viewers will have to finish reading within a few seconds.
Later on the Twitter post, Wong added photos showing her friend's regular post updating his profile picture on the left half of the screen while her friend's Facebook story can be seen on the right half of the display. Both feeds are shown simultaneously.
Sponsored Posts will also be seen on the hybrid carousel the same way as they are regularly shown on Facebook News Feed. Having the Story Feed viewership add up to the News Feed audience increases the posts tendency to gain more viewership than when they are posted on standard feeds alone.
Wong's Twitter GIF post has been retweeted almost a hundred times as of this writing. It gained 211 likes but is now flooded with comments most of them responding negatively on the Facebook News Feed and Story Feed hybrid carousel.
Some of Twitter handler @wongmjane followers are now speculating that this step is one of Facebook's avenues to make more money. A follower with the Twitter handler @JohnConstine speculated that it was primarily due to the 20 percent Facebook share loss because users are viewing stories more than the advertisements shown through the regular News Feeds.
Facebook shares fell 20% when it warned users were moving to Stories faster than advertisers. A posts/Stories hybrid carousel lets Fb stick feed ads in Stories pic.twitter.com/KsFT7Gn1zg — Josh Constine (@JoshConstine) April 15, 2019
The Facebook News Feed and Story Feed hybrid carousel brought some Facebook users into speculating that the social media giant is bringing back the Facebook paper back to the scene. While some suggest that the company should actually do so instead of pushing through with the hybrid carousel.
Facebook clarified that they are still in the very early stage of prototyping the hybrid carousel for News Feed and Story Feed. It is still undisclosed as of the moment which among the shown functions of the carousel are features and which ones are bugs.
