Facebook is split into so many products these days that it’s hard to keep track to everything the social app has to offer if you’re not a hardcore user. News Feed, Stories, Messenger are just some of the features that Facebook has made available to users throughout the years.
The reason Facebook split its app into so many pieces is quite simple: monetization. Well, it appears that the social giant has found a way to make even more money by combining, rather than dividing, two of these features: News Feed and Stories.
The changes spotted by software engineer Jane Manchun Wong indicates that Facebook is testing a new format that will combine News Feed and Stories into a one swipeable, hybrid carousel.
It will allow standard feed posts and ads to be placed inside Stories in the same carousel so that users would be tempted to swipe through them more often than not, which translates in more views and better monetization of content.
The GIF posted by Jane shows how a user seamlessly switches between a News Feed story and a Stories video, inside the hybrid carousel. The feature has been discovered in the Android version of Facebook, but if the company does indeed plan to make it available, it will be present on all supported platforms.