Social media giant Facebook is testing a new feature that will allow users to view an updated News Feed and also possibly post comments on Facebook posts even while they have no internet connectivity. That’s right, a full-on offline mode maybe coming to Facebook very soon. According to Facebook, the company is “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.”
Facebook’s News Feed is the social media website’s main home page that aggregates all statuses, photos, links, and the Likes posted by people or services you follow. However, until now “you might need to wait for stories to load when you opened News Feed” during periods of poor internet connection or no connection at all. All this is about to change soon.
“We are now testing an update in which we look at all the previously downloaded stories present on your phone that you have not yet viewed, and rank them based on their relevance. We also factor in whether the images for the story are available. This way we can immediately display relevant stories you haven’t seen yet, instead of showing a spinner while you wait for new stories. When we receive new stories from the server when you’re back online, we load and rank those stories normally,” Facebook said in a post.
Moreover, Facebook is also “testing improvements to keep these stories up to date throughout the day by periodically retrieving new stories when you have a good connection.” This will help you receive the most relevant and current posts, it said.