When You Think Of Facebook, What’s The First Word That Comes To Your Mind?
Connection, family, friends, and interactions are the words that come to my mind when I think of Facebook, but they won’t remain the same for much more. Did you know that Facebook is changing its feed, and making it look more like the TikTok app? Maybe you are wondering, what does that mean? Well, it means that they will restructure their feed, and it will mostly be video content, such as reels and stories. They want to be seen as a “Discovery engine” rather than an app that just connects people. The feed will start by recommending posts, regarding whether you follow or are friends with that person. This is planned to be executed in the near-term plans. A memo was sent on April 27 by Tom Alison to their employees (Meta Executive in charge of Facebook), but The Verge just revealed the information on June 15.
The reason why they want to do this change in their feed is that TikTok is gaining more and more users and usage each time and they need to do something to respond to the rise of TikTok. They weren’t being that competitive, that’s why they had to rethink the feed entirely and change their algorithm to take on TikTok. As Alison mentioned, Facebook will be a place where people can go and get recommendations about content and things they enjoy, recommended by AI (from people and pages you don’t necessarily follow).
What will the feed look like?
It will be a mix of stories and reels at the top, then posts from both platforms, Instagram and Facebook which are recommended by its discovery engine. The feed will be more visual. As Alison described it: “It’ll be a more visual, video-heavy experience with clearer prompts to direct message friends a post. To make messaging even more prominent, Facebook is working on placing a user’s Messenger inbox at the top right of the app, undoing the infamous decision to separate the two apps eight years ago.” I consider it a good move to put back together Facebook Messenger into the app, as it will be easier for people to share what they see.
New priorities reveled on the Memo:
1. Make reels successful: they want to enhance the discoverability of all content but will make an emphasis on short videos as there is a gap they need to bridge there.
2. Build world-class recommendations technology: they want to be seen as a discovery engine, to achieve that, they will develop a recommendation system that responds to people's interests, select what engages them, and identify trending content and topics.
3. Unlock messaging-based sharing: Because people tend to share more in private (messenger) rather than in public in the main feed.
Parts I consider most important of the Memo:
“The Home experience will balance both connected content and unconnected content. We’re working to clean up top-of-feed and make it just as easy to see Stories from friends as it is to discover new content in Reels. We’re also exploring a Community Panel to give direct access to the communities you care about most. Finally, we’re testing a product to give you predictable access to your connected Feed, with the ability to sort in chronological order and filter by Groups, Pages, and Friends. Internally we call this “Mr. T” and I’m excited about the progress the team is making.”
“Historically, Facebook has taken an entity-centric approach to discovery. We help you connect with the friends, groups, and pages you care about most, then updates from those connections are ranked in Feed. Unconnected content in Feed surfaced via reshares from the friends, groups, and pages you follow, but unconnected recommendations weren’t historically a core part of the Feed experience. However, we did invest heavily in unconnected content discovery on adjacent surfaces, i.e., through search queries or recommendations-first products like Watch, News, and Marketplace.”
Why did it catch my eye?
As media consumption behaviors are changing, I consider it important to keep updated and evolve according to our customer’s needs and preferences. As Alison said, “Stories are really the way that more people are sharing with their friends. What we’re really finding is that people want to connect over content”. That means that Facebook is going to show you the content that you really want to see and of your interests and at the same time, make it super easy to share, discuss and connect with other people.
I consider important and I like that Facebook is keeping a balance between video content and they are relating it to connections too. They are making it easy to share over other platforms. connecting people too, because that’s the way people remember Facebook, no matter where you are, you can have meaningful social interactions, and connect with your friends, at any time and place. And I mention this, because as a consumer when I first read the news, I was a little bit nostalgic that Facebook wasn’t going to be about connections anymore, but then I keep reading and I understood what it was about, I like it, therefore I consider important two things. The first one is the way they communicate this new change and take advantage of it (this new content will give the opportunity to people to connect), and the second, one, is the balance between content and connections. As Mark Zuckerberg said: “people are already using the social network differently than they used to, people spend on Facebook is watching a video”
I think that this shift in Facebook’s strategy can help the app grow and attract younger people too, gaining market from TikTok. Moreover, I consider it relevant and that it would work as you will get the chance to see and recommend useful videos that you were likely to miss. Even though it’s a little bit late, in my opinion, they waited too long to do this shift.
