Why Are My Facebook Page’s Posts Getting Bundled Together?

It’s your fault. You’ve “liked” too many pages, and now Facebook has to do something about it. Sure you might be following 50+ pages on Facebook, but do you really interact with all of them? You don’t. And Facebook knows it.

That’s why Facebook has rolled out a site-wide experiment that causes some users to see posts by pages “bundled” or “collapsed” together.

Here’s the logic:

[Correction: A spokesperson from Facebook has reached out to us to explain the logic, and it’s slightly different than we originally reported. The new design let’s users know when there are multiple posts from the same friend, Page, or Group in the News Feed. In this test, when there are multiple posts from the same person, Page, or Group in a short space of time, Facebook will show the top 2-3 stories, with a note at the top that there are more posts from this source. Users will have the option to click “see more” to see additional posts. This is to help people find more content they are interested in. Whether or not posts collapse or bundle is actually dependent on there being multiple posts from the Page, person, or Group. It has nothing to do with being a passive versus die-hard fan. I originally reported that the bundling was determined by how engaged of a fan you were, but this is not correct. The rest of the original post was accurate, but I apologize for the mistake on the logic.]

Here’s what the bundling looks like on desktop. Notice the “posted 3 updates” at the top of the screenshot and the “see all” at the bottom. Please note, there is no “see all” in the Facebook mobile app.

 

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This is another one of Facebook’s attempts at surfacing the most relevant and valuable content to you in your feed. When Page posts get bundled together they may be less visible and therefore get fewer real impressions and clicks, which can be hard on businesses that depend on their Pages for sales or traffic. But if Facebook is showing the posts bundled rather than not at all, the update could actually help some Pages with lower engagement.

[Update: Facebook has clarified that they only show bundled posts that would not otherwise have been in the feed for that person. Any Page post you would have seen in the News Feed will still be shown.]

Only time will tell how this impacts the reach of brand Pages, but if you’re a social media manager you should probably keep a close eye on your Page’s reach. If Facebook stays true to it’s “surfacing the best content” modo, my guess is that the better posts will get even more reach.