Fb’s seeking to get again to its roots of connecting family and friends, with the addition of an up to date tab for friend-only content material, which it hopes will spark extra engagement between individuals within the app.
As you’ll be able to see in these instance screens, Fb’s up to date buddies tab, which is being launched as we speak to customers in the U.S. and Canada, will now embrace a feed of the entire posts, tales, and Reels shared by your connections within the app. It’ll additionally embrace a module for birthday reminders, when you’ll additionally be capable of entry buddy requests, and see which of your folks are on-line at any given time.
Conceptually, that’ll put extra give attention to buddy engagement, versus the AI-recommended content material that’s progressively encroaching on the principle feed.
Which Fb says is a part of a broader effort to carry again the unique “magic” of the app:
“Connecting with buddies has been part of Fb because it launched. Over time, Fb advanced to fulfill altering wants and created best-in-class experiences throughout Teams, Video, Market and extra, however the magic of buddies has fallen away. We’ll be including a number of “OG” Fb experiences all year long, starting with the revamped Buddies tab.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has additionally offered his personal clarification for the change in an interview with YouTube stars Colin and Samir:
“Fb began off as this on-line listing for individuals to get to know the individuals round them of their communities, [and] then it kind of advanced on this course that one a part of it, which was sharing and Information Feed, simply utterly outscaled, and ended up being an important a part of the product. And we simply targeted on that, and now we’re right here, 21 years later, and that feed half within the sharing ecosystem is utilized by three billion individuals world wide. Individuals spend lots of time on it, they take pleasure in it, however this humorous factor occurred, which is that lots of the opposite type of enjoyable and helpful components of the unique expertise, we simply kind of did not focus as a lot on. And never solely did we not give attention to them as a lot, however I type of look across the web as we speak, and I notice that nobody else really recreated lots of these items that was once fairly magical about Fb both.”
As such, Zuck and Co. at the moment are seeking to carry again what was nice about Fb within the early 2000’s, with this revamped buddy feed being step one in its “old-fashioned” Fb revival.
Which looks like an attention-grabbing concept, prompting extra buddy engagement within the app that everyone is on, by giving it extra particular focus.
However will it really work?
Effectively, no it gained’t.
Little doubt Meta has finished its analysis, and has its causes for making an attempt out this new experiment, however there are numerous causes by “OG” Fb went away, and it’s not simply because Fb determined to cease prioritizing pleasant interplay.
For one, no one posts on Fb anymore. Your folks are posting method much less, and as such, your feed of devoted buddy content material goes to be fairly naked, and fairly unengaging to start out with.
It additionally gained’t be the principle feed, and most of the people gained’t trouble to faucet throughout from the principle feed to the devoted buddies tab. And in the event that they do, they gained’t discover a lot content material, giving them much less purpose to come back again.
The initiative additionally misses the truth that most individuals stopped sharing on Fb as a result of it bought boring, it bought divisive to share your opinions (and get criticized, typically by family and friends for such), and all of us moved to smaller non-public messaging teams as an alternative to keep away from the publicity of the principle feed.
Nowadays, persons are much more more likely to share in non-public than they’re in public, and I don’t see how a devoted buddy feed adjustments that.
Lastly, there’s additionally Meta’s current shift carefully insurance policies, which is able to see extra political content material returning to person feeds, and fewer friction in re-sharing of misinformation, with Group Notes unlikely to discourage among the most controversial dialogue factors.
Political posts are an enormous a part of the rationale why individuals stopped posting on Fb, so seeking to put extra give attention to buddy posts, whereas additionally bringing again political content material looks like a harmful combine. And never, based mostly on traits, an excessively partaking one.
Total, there’s no purpose to suppose that this will probably be a major replace, however Meta appears eager to push this rosy view that Fb is all good, and an excellent place to hang around, and neglect the rise in misinformation on account of the swap to Group Notes.
Yeah, I don’t see it, however Zuckerberg says that there’s extra to come back in its new OG Fb revamp.
