Facebook Is Testing LOL, a special feed for memes

After Facebook Watch, Lasso, and IGTV, Facebook is testing a new hub called "LOL" that will let kids share and post humorous meme content.

According to a new report, the company has spent months building LOL which a special feed of funny videos and GIF-like clips.

A Facebook representative confirmed that it had been experimenting with the "LOL" hub for teenagers. "We are running a small scale test and therefore the concept is in the early stages right now," the spokesperson said in a statement.

The product is divided into categories like “For You,” “Animals,” “Fails,” “Pranks”, "LoL".

LOL' is currently in the early phase of testing, the app is still not fully developed. With around 100 high school students who signed non-disclosure agreements with parental consent to do focus groups and one-on-one testing with Facebook employees," said the report.

LOL, the feed can allow users to filter content to indicate categories like “Wait For It”, “Savage”, “Classics”, “Gaming”, “Celebs”, “School”, and “Stand-Up”, or view dedicated sub-feeds for these topics by tapping the buttons atop the screen.

According to social media specialists, this is yet another attempt by Facebook -- embroiled in several data breach and privacy violation cases -- to get into a yet-to-be-tapped market to boost its stalled user growth.

"With the growing incidences of child trafficking, wrong marketing messaging amid the absence of proper guidelines, such new apps meant for kids can be another cause of concerns for parents," stressed Mishra.

With over a billion users, Facebook-owned photo-sharing platform Instagram is presently very popular among teenagers.

Facebook has over 2.2 billion users globally, as well as 300 million in India.

The company last year launched a short-form video app called "Lasso" but the app did not gain much popularity.