People aren't sharing on Facebook like they used to, and Facebook is worried

REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook started as a place for people to share personal moments from their lives, like engagements and baby photos. But now Facebook is seeing people share fewer personal posts with friends, according to reports in The Information and Bloomberg.

That doesn't mean overall sharing on Facebook is down, but it does indicate that the more than 1 billion people on Facebook are starting to use it differently - namely for sharing videos and web links.

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The decline in personal sharing on Facebook (think status updates, photos, notes, etc.) also comes at a time when messaging apps like Snapchat and Facebook-owned WhatsApp have taken off.

As of "earlier this year," what Facebook internally calls "original broadcast sharing" had declined by 15% from the year before, according to data obtained by The Information. The report said that Facebook recently formed a team to help fight off the decline in sharing with features like "On This Day," which resurfaces content you've shared on Facebook in years past. Facebook has also changed its News Feed algorithm to prioritize what people share from their own profiles, the report noted.

The Information said that "only 39% of weekly active users posted original content in a given week." Facebook has internally called the decline in sharing "context collapse," according to Bloomberg.

Facebook's most recent bet is live video, which will soon be front and center in its main app.

"People continue to share a ton of Facebook," a Facebook spokesperson told Tech Insider. "The overall level of sharing has remained not only strong, but similar to levels in prior years." The spokesperson declined to provide any more details.