Your Facebook Feed Is Changing Again – Heres A Look At Why.
The Meta-owned platform is once again looking to switch up its approach in line with constantly changing media consumption behaviour.
The Verge obtained an internal overview from FB App chief Tom Alison, Meta is looking to to prioritise incorporating AI-recommended content into Facebook feeds based on popularity and overall engagement over your personal connections; this is similar to how TikTok sources feed content from outside your personal network. Facebook is also working to streamline content sharing by reversing their move to take messenger outside of the app 2 years ago – these messaging tools are now coming back into the main user interface.
In their own words Meta explained:
“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.”
The Verge provided its own overview of how they see the updated Facebook feed working:
“The main tab will become a mix of Stories and Reels at the top, followed by posts its discovery engine recommends from across both Facebook and Instagram. 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.”
This is another major strategy shift of Meta that has been completely influenced by TikTok, which is not showing signs of slowing down. Meta is trying hard to keep up and is moving hard to reflect TikTok’s proven strategy of focussing on an AI-fueled content recommendations based on your interests, instead of what your friends are sharing.
Alison discusses the the proposed shift: “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 was 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.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg noting in its Q1 earnings call that:
“While we’re experiencing an increase in short-form video, we’re also seeing a major shift in feeds from being almost exclusively curated by your social graph or follow graph to now having more of your feed recommended by AI, even if the content wasn’t posted by a friend or someone you follow. Social content from friends and people and businesses you follow will continue being a lot of the most valuable, engaging and differentiated content for our services, but now also being able to accurately recommend content from the whole universe that you don’t follow directly unlocks a large amount of interesting and useful videos and posts that you might have otherwise missed.”
They are following TikTok’s lead in bringing more content to the surface that is better for the creators (who get more views) and for users (who get more access to more interesting content outside of their network) but, it is a major shift in their long-standing key point of differentiation – that is has the biggest user base of any social platform and is historically the largest connection tool for social networks.
TikTok has diluted Facebook’s strength by focussing on effectively systemising users interests without them having to follow certain communities, people or groups. Facebook is now changing and they may risk losing their key point of connectivity but they have to in order to keep up. As a response to the success of TikTok, Meta’s fastest growing content form is Reels. Reels make up more than 20% of the time that people spend on Instagram and video makes up 50% of the total time that people spend on FB.
Alison discusses how Facebook will utilise this:
“Today’s genre of public short-form video opens up new ways for people to create and discover content. While Facebook’s discovery engine is designed to support many different formats (text, photos, video, and eventually Metaverse experiences), our biggest gap today is around short-form video and that’s why we’re focused on integrating Reels in Home, Watch, In-Feed Recommendations, and Groups.”
What does this mean for your businesses social media? Reels. Reels and more content from people you’re not connected to in the app. This is a great opportunity to make your content as SEO optimised as possible so that it gets in front of new audiences that are interested in your content.
If you want to have an informal chat about how you can adapt your own strategy to reflect the changes that Meta is bringing in, reach out and arrange a call with Francesca.
