For most of
Facebook’s history, its
executives have executed a tried-and-true playbook: Mimic the success of
others.
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On July 14, the company, which has been renamed
Meta, continued that tactic with a revamp of its main Facebook app that will
change how users browse the service and make it act a bit more like one of its
largest competitors.
Facebook users will soon open the app to a new Home
tab that will feature a feed with photos, looping videos, and status updates
from a mix of friends and family. The Home tab will also show a variety of
posts from people and pages unconnected to a user’s network, labeled “Suggested
for You”.
That category will be driven by what Facebook’s
algorithms think someone may like to see, based on thousands of individual
information signals and the user’s browsing history on Facebook. The so-called
discovery engine behind those algorithms is powered by Facebook’s artificial
intelligence technology.
In short, the Facebook app will act more like
TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media app. While Facebook has historically
connected people to content produced by their friends, the video-based TikTok
relies on algorithmic signals and viral content to show viewers highly engaging
posts, without having to rely on someone’s network of friends or connections.
The change is part of a push by Meta to drive the
use of its social apps, which also include Instagram. In recent months, Mark
Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, has promoted video products across
Instagram and Facebook, with the company inserting more suggested content to
keep users engaged and regularly returning to the apps. On Instagram, the
formula seems to be working, Zuckerberg has said.
The Home tab follows a popular social media trend
known as “discovery,” which is essentially relying on algorithms and machine
learning to better understand the types of content a user might like and
serving it up without the person’s working hard to find it. Facebook is
investing heavily in that area, as are companies like Snap and Twitter.
TikTok’s emphasis on discovery and serving up
engaging content has been a social media phenomenon. Founded less than a decade
ago, TikTok has added hundreds of millions of users over the past few years.
Young people spend more than 90 minutes a day watching TikTok, according to
some estimates, besting even YouTube on time spent inside the app.
That has put pressure on Meta’s family of apps. Its
executives have grown concerned about the share of younger users migrating to
TikTok and other up-and-coming social media apps.
To combat the attrition, Facebook and Instagram
executives have made product changes that follow competitors’ moves. In 2020,
Instagram introduced Reels, a short-form, looping video product nearly
identical to that produced by TikTok.
Meta has made big
changes in the past to how its products work, occasionally ticking off its user
base. But the new changes are occurring more subtly and over time. The Home tab
will still be populated with posts from friends and groups and will slowly
introduce outside content while ramping up more videos and Reels posts from
influencers. While that approach has been successful for TikTok, it’s unclear
whether Facebook’s users will embrace the changes — or whether they will even
notice.
In the Facebook app update, users should expect to
see more short-form video and Reels in the Home tab as the company refines the
algorithms and improves the discovery experience. Home content can also include
photos or articles from pages and groups that a user does not already follow.
Users can still choose to view content only from
friends, family, or certain pages — without seeing unconnected, suggested posts
— by navigating to the new Feeds tab. Under the Feeds tab, people can view
content in categories like posts from friends, posts from groups they belong to
and pages they subscribe to, or a stream of everything combined and posted in
reverse chronological order.
Zuckerberg said people would still have control over
what they saw in the app with the Feeds tab.
“One of the most requested features for Facebook is
to make sure people don’t miss friends’ posts,” he said in a Facebook post.
“The app will still open to a personalized feed on the Home tab, where our
discovery engine will recommend the content we think you’ll care most about.
But the Feeds tab will give you a way to customize and control your experience
further.”
The Facebook app update will be rolled out globally
over the next week.
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