Over the last two months we’ve been experimenting with half of new members seeing FetLife’s current activity feed while the other half of new members have been seeing an updated version.

The only difference between the current activity feed and the updated activity is that posts by the people you follow are moved up higher in the activity feed. This way, people didn’t miss any new posts by the people you follow.

The updated activity feed works similarly to how favoriting works. So on the updated feed you will see in order:

1. Posts by people you’ve favorited
2. Posts by people you’re in a relationship with
3. Posts by people you follow (e.g. post picture, video, writing, status. etc.)
4. All other types of activity by people you follow (e.g. love, comment, etc.)

Here’s what we’ve observed from members using the updated activity feed over the past two months:

• 90.5% more loves on status updates
• 16.6% more loves on writings
• 8.5% more loves on pictures
• 80.8% more comments on status updates
• 4.3% more comments on writings (not yet statistically significant)
• 10.5% more comments on pictures
• Members scrolled 10–12% more
• Daily active actions per member increased from 4.3 to 5.6

The only negative impact we observed was a 4% decrease in follows, which makes sense given the rise in other engagement actions. Regardless, we’re already working on a solution to address this.

Given the success of the experiment, we’ve decided to gradually roll out the updated activity feed to all members. Our goal is to migrate all accounts to the updated feed by the end of the year.

If after trying out the updated activity feed, you decide that you prefer the current activity feed, you can uncheck “Allow Large Stories to Bubble Up” in your Activity Feed Settings.

We hope this update makes it easier for you to stay connected with the people you follow.

Stay kinky, my friends!