Evaluating a Two-Tab Facebook Feed: Friend Posts vs. Everything Else

You are a product manager on Facebook Feed. The team is considering breaking Feed into two tabs: one with posts from a person's friends and one with content from everyone else. How would you decide whether to make the change? ```hint Count what each tab would hold Before judging the layout, ask how much fresh friend content a typical user actually has each day, and what happens to the people and Pages whose posts land in the tab fewer users open. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - What is driving the idea: users saying they miss friends' posts, falling interaction between friends, or a push to give recommended content more room? - What belongs in the non-friends tab: Pages, groups and creators the user follows, unconnected recommended posts and Reels, or only recommendations? Where do group posts written by friends go? - Which tab would open by default, and would ads run in both? - Is this one decision for every user and market, or could the split be a setting or differ by segment? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - The goal the change would serve for Facebook and its users, and the problem that triggered it. - How the split affects each side of the ecosystem: different kinds of users, friends who post, Pages and creators, and advertisers. - Decision metrics: a primary outcome, connection signals such as friend interactions and posting, and guardrails on revenue and creator reach. - An experiment that handles network effects between friends, novelty and default-tab behavior, with a decision rule set in advance. - Lighter alternatives to a hard split, and a clear recommendation. ### Follow-up Questions - In the test, time spent rises but users' friends post less. How do you read that, and what do you decide? - Two weeks in, most test users never open the second tab. Does that mean the split failed? - Page owners in the test markets report a sharp drop in reach. How do you weigh that against gains for users?