Facebook adds takeaway delivery option in latest bid to keep users hooked

Facebook has added a food delivery option to its website and app.

The social network now lets users order meals directly from the Facebook home page, with the experience powered by either Slice or Delivery.com, which partnered with the company last year.

On the app, users have started seeing a blue burger icon in the main menu, and a colourful burger icon now sits in the sidebar on the site.

Hitting it takes you to a list of supported restaurants in your area, which you can filter by cuisine type, price and rating.

Users have been able to order food through Facebook for some time, but only by visiting a supported restaurant’s Facebook page.

Moving the option to the home page makes it much easier to access, and should ensure that a lot more people actually use it.

Once you’ve chosen a restaurant, you can select ‘Start Order’. You can then browse the restaurant’s menu, select your dishes, edit your order, add a tip and pay without ever leaving Facebook.

As you complete your order, a confirmation message will appear and you’ll also receive an email detailing your order and a delivery time.

According to TechCrunch, it doesn’t always work properly, with some pages failing to load and the option sometimes disappearing and reappearing.

The feature is currently only available to a select number of users in the US, but a wider rollout will likely take place in the near future if it proves a hit.

While it doesn’t exactly do anything out of the ordinary, the feature is likely to attract lots of users due to sheer convenience.

It should also help keep users on Facebook for longer.

The site has launched a huge number of extra features that users can find elsewhere over recent months, including Stories, Weather, Town Hall and Instant Games, designed with the sole intention of keeping people on Facebook.

Social media companies use a number of tricks to make sure people use their sites and apps as frequently as possible, for as long as possible.

The simply continuous scroll, which is used by the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, for instance, keeps users around by encouraging them to try to find an update worth looking at.