Facebook Updates Home Feed to Mimic that of TikTok

Changes are coming to Facebook to compete with TikTok. Thursday morning, Mark Zuckerberg announced a couple of new updates to their feeds.

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Feeds tab

The first update is that Facebook is adding a Feeds tab. Feeds give users the option to view content from friends, pages, and groups separately. So, for example, if you want to see posts from only your friends and family, you can switch to the tab that says “Friends” so that only content from your friends' list appears.

The cool part is that the content will show up in chronological order, which has been a highly-requested feature among both Facebook and Instagram users. Both of these features are neat because of how jumbled and random the feed can be. So to see posts from only friends and in chronological order is a nice change of pace.

New home feed experience

The second update is with the default home feed experience. The home feed will act similar to TikTok’s “For You” page, in which the algorithm will show you content based on your interests and likes. It will also be a space for the social media app to suggest posts from people and pages you may not follow. Zuckerberg, via Facebook post, explains more about the new home feed:

“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.”

The new home feed signifies a change in Facebook’s priorities. What we’re starting to see is Facebook shifting to a more creator-friendly platform. In other words, they’re prioritizing content creators over friends and family – essentially moving away from the foundation on which the app was founded on.

What this means for creators and users

So what does this mean for creators and users? For users, that simply means that their home feed will have more content from outside creators than from their friends, which they can see on the Feeds tab. 

For creators, it provides an excellent opportunity to expand and grow their reach on Facebook’s massive platform, home to 2.9 billion monthly active users. On the other hand, it will mean that the home feed will be algorithm-heavy. So creators will have to experiment and mess around with the app to understand how it works and what metrics affect performance.

Now it is important to note that these changes apply to their mobile app. No word on whether this will be implemented on the web. Will the feed updates make a huge difference for Facebook? In short, no. The feed before was already quite random and convoluted. The new feed will be even more so with the algorithm suggesting posts from creators.

But at least for those who simply use Facebook to keep in touch with their friends, you can still do so, thanks to the Feeds tab.

What do you think of the new Facebook feed updates?

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