Facebook is so focused on being connected that it wants users to be connected even when they’re not connected. This week, the company will be rolling out a new feature for users on slow or spotty connections that downloads stories for offline reading, sorts them based on relevance, and then displays them on their News Feed, even when they aren’t actually connected to the Internet. The company is also allowing users to write comments while they’re offline, which will be automatically posted once an Internet connection is established.
Our mission with News Feed is to connect people with the stories that matter most to them, but if people’s News Feeds aren’t loading because of poor internet connections, we can’t show them the most relevant stories. People are coming online at a staggering rate in emerging markets, and in most cases they’re doing so on mobile via 2G connections. To improve News Feed so it works seamlessly and quickly for people in all parts of the world, we’re focused on designing it to operate well regardless of device or network connection. As a next step in improving people’s experiences on slower internet connections, we are shipping several changes that will more efficiently show you relevant stories in your News Feed when you’re on a slow connection and will let you compose comments on posts when you’re offline. Anytime someone loads News Feed, we retrieve the latest and most relevant stories for each person. But most people don’t scroll through all stories when they look at News Feed.
