Facebook Inc. (FB) continues to add features to its News Feed to make it the top live events content provider.
These tweaks include links to different articles, which would be displayed in a related articles box and also pushing old links back to the top when friends of the user comment on the same. Through these recent additions, Facebook intends to make the platform a hub for both news sharing and discussion.
Facebook witnessed a 170% increase in news traffic this year, which outpaced its user growth. However, Facebook continues to face significant competition from service providers like Flipboard, Prismatic, Circa, along with social networking sites such as Twitter (TWTR) and Google’s (GOOG) Google+.
In such a scenario user engagement becomes imperative to drive traffic growth. In a bid to improve user experience, Facebook recently announced that it is testing a new feature, which will make it easier for users to access previous News Feed posts.
It is quite evident that Facebook is stressing on improving its news feed services and trying to provide real-time event updates in a bid to expand its presence in this segment.
Facebook is also trying to increase the number of Internet users, which will in turn increase traffic on its website. The company has recently launched the internet.org project in association with Qualcomm (QCOM) and other technology companies.
If properly implemented, this project will make Internet easily accessible to the majority of the population in developing countries.
Facebook is also trying to attract new users and at the same time maintain existing ones by introducing new features such as the one mentioned above.
These new make facebook much more attractive as a social networking platform, offering greater benefits.
On the other hand, companies such as LinkedIn Corp. (LNKD) and Yelp Inc. are also offering newer services and thereby increasing competition for Facebook.
Currently, Facebook has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).
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