In an attempt to bring people back, Facebook is allowing a limited number of users to have up to five different profiles as part of a new test.
Initial reports come from Bloomberg (opens in new tab) where it says the test is only available to certain users in select countries including the United States. A profile on the account will need to serve as the core with the user’s real name attached to it. The four additional profiles will not need to use your person’s real name as they can have their own unique username. Also, they all have a unique news feed. It should also be noted that multiple accounts are not yet allowed on Facebook. Profiles are considered different from accounts.
We contacted Meta for more information and a spokesperson got back to us detailing the test. They said it’s “to help people tailor their experience based on interests and relationships.”
Better organization is the focus as users can create different profiles for different purposes. For example, you might have a profile for work, family, gaming community, cycling group, or planning a vacation. With these different profiles, Meta also hopes to alleviate account confusion.
The spokesperson went into detail about account security and community standards. If you break the rules on one profile, it will affect the rest. Let’s say you impersonate someone. This may result in the removal of that specific profile or the banning of the entire account. Facebook has a Strike counting system (opens in new tab) on the spot to judge which profiles are banned. Usernames must still follow Community Standards and not contain numbers or special characters.
As for availability, this is still unknown as Meta “may roll out this feature more widely in the future.” We also asked the spokesperson for a complete list of countries that have multi-profile testing. All the spokesperson said was that they had no information to share.
Analysis: Stagnant user base
Facebook’s popularity is on the decline due to a series of mistakes. In fact, the platform reported a decline in users back in february when Facebook saw its first drop in the number of daily users. It went from 1.93 billion users to 1.929 billion daily users. While the drop may seem ridiculously tiny, it’s still a million people leaving. It is also important to take into account that Facebook Isn’t Exactly Winning With Teens, any. Younger users seem to prefer Snapchat and TikTok.
And on top of all that, you can’t ignore the numerous Facebook data leaks that have tarnished the company’s reputation. The platform tried to improve user security with Facebook protection and two-factor authentication (opens in new tab). However, all the changes in the world don’t matter if a tech giant like Meta can be fooled. coughing up sensitive user data to hackers.
Good luck to Facebook in regaining user trust. It will be interesting to see if the multi-account feature will be enough to bring people back.
If you’re curious to increase your online protection, has a list of the best internet security packages for 2022.