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Are Facebookers sharing less personal stuff?

Jessica Guynn
USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — Are people sharing less on Facebook?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters.

Facebook says no, but published reports allege the world's largest social network is battling steep declines in how much personal news people share.

Facebook has set up a team in London to figure out how to stem the double-digit decline in the sharing of "original" posts among Facebook's 1.6 billion users, unnamed people told The Information.

Sharing of personal news, rather than news articles or Internet memes, fell 21% year over year as of mid-2015, The Information reported. Overall sharing fell 5.5% year over year as of mid-2015, so Facebook had fewer posts overall to show people in the news feed, the publication said.

"People continue to share a ton on Facebook; the overall level of sharing has remained not only strong but similar to levels in prior years," Facebook said in an emailed statement.

Facebook goes all in on live video

Facebook users have become more reluctant to discuss the intimate details of their lives on Facebook as it grows larger and their lists of friends balloon, according to Bloomberg. Facebook employees working on the problem call it "context collapse," as personal sharing shifts to services with smaller audiences, such as Snapchat, Facebook's photo-sharing service, Instagram and other messaging services, Bloomberg reported.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has addressed the need to get people to share more personal tidbits during Facebook staff meetings this year,  Bloomberg reported. Facebook has been trying to lure users with tempting new distractions such as the "On This Day" feature launched last year, which reminds you of posts from previous years, and Facebook Live, the  streaming video tool launched this week.

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