Facebook is testing a way to give its users more profiles per account, ostensibly to give users more opportunities for sharing posts and keeping up with the platform’s content.
On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that Meta (Facebook’s parent company) would begin experimenting with letting some Facebook users generate up to four other profiles in addition to their main account’s profile.
That’s right: The experimental functionality will let users have multiple profiles linked to a main account and those additional profiles aren’t required to have real names. Plus, each profile is expected to have its own separate feed. However, though each profile has its own feed, Bloomberg says that only one profile will “be able to comment or like another post.”
Interestingly, Bloomberg also reports that since all of a user’s profiles are still subject to Facebook’s rules and they’re all connected to a main Facebook account, then “rule violations on one profile will affect the others.” And TechCrunch reports that repeat violations committed with an additional profile can lead to the removal of the offending additional profile as well as all other connected profiles, which can include main accounts. So it seems that while this functionality may offer more ways to connect on Facebook, it could also come with more opportunities to lose access to those profiles.
But besides setting up a Finsta-like Facebook profile, what could these additional profiles be used for? According to TechCrunch’s reporting, it was suggested that these extra profiles could be curated to focus on specific interests or hobbies. As in, each individual profile would be created to focus on a specific topic like music or food.
Digital Trends also contacted Meta regarding this experimental feature and received a response. In the response, a Meta company spokesperson did confirm the existence of the feature and the testing of it:
“To help people tailor their experience based on interests and relationships, we’re testing a way for people to have more than one profile tied to a single Facebook account. Anyone who uses Facebook must continue to follow our rules.”
The multiple-profiles functionality is expected to allow users to switch between profiles pretty easily. It’s also worth noting that those who elect to use this feature are still not allowed to use their extra profiles to impersonate others. Even though you can pick out any name you want for these profiles, those names are still subject to Facebook’s rules, which means they can’t contain any special characters or numbers, and they have to be unique names.
Lastly, if you plan on doing things like running a Facebook Page or using Facebook Dating, just know that you can’t use your additional profiles for these. You’ll need your main account’s profile for those features.
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