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Snapchat’s redesign puts publishers in one feed and friends in another. That’s exactly what Facebook says doesn’t work.

Can Snapchat make two feeds work when Facebook couldn’t?

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel
Scott Olson / Getty

Facebook has decided that completely separating posts from your friends and family from posts shared by brands and publishers is a bad idea.

It says it discovered that to be the case when it tested the separation strategy by running two feeds for users in a handful of countries over the past four months.

“People don’t want two separate feeds,” wrote Facebook exec Adam Mosseri on Thursday. “In surveys, people told us they were less satisfied with the posts they were seeing, and having two separate feeds didn’t actually help them connect more with friends and family.”

Those findings aren’t just interesting for Facebook. That idea of separating friend stuff from publisher stuff? That was Snapchat’s entire argument for why it rolled out a massive redesign late last year. The new-look Snapchat keeps your friend content on one page and content from brands and celebrities on another.

So far, users haven’t liked the new Snapchat at all (though TechCrunch says downloads are actually up). CEO Evan Spiegel keeps preaching that it will just take time for people to realize the new feel is better.

But it’s interesting that Facebook has decided that this separation strategy doesn’t work. Snapchat will have to hope Facebook is wrong.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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