In order to strengthen its main motto of connecting friends and families, Facebook is adding an additional tab for friend only content which is expected to spark engagement between people in the app. It will be including feed of all stories, posts and reels which have been shared by your connections in the app. It will also be including module for birthday reminders which can be used for accessing friend requests and find out which of your friends are online at any point of time.
It will be focused more towards friend engagement as opposed to AI recommended content which encroaches on the main feed. With it Facebook plans to bring back its original magic on the app. With this revamped friend feed, Facebook aims to bring back the old school Facebook. This is an interesting idea which would lead to more friend engagement in the app as it would be specifically focusing on it.
If you all remember, then Facebook started off as an online directory for people to know more about people around them, over a period of time it evolved and one part of which was sharing and News Feed which grew and became one of the most important part of the product. It has been 21 years bow and that feed is now being used by three billion people around the globe so going back to the roots is something which everyone around was missing and is a good initiative by Facebook.
Connection with friends has been part of Facebook since it was launched and over the years, Facebook has been evolving for meeting changing needs and creation of best in class experiences across video, groups and marketplace but the magic of friendship has fallen away. Now the company plans to add several OG Facebook experiences throughout the year and it would start off with the revamped Friends tab.
If you remember, Facebook started off as an online directory of people for getting to know people around them in their community and it evolved in this direction where one part of it which was sharing and New Feed, it out scaled and became an important part of the product. More than two decades later, the feed part in the sharing ecosystem is being used by more than 3 billion people around the world. People have been spending a lot of time on it but the company didn’t focus much on it. Also, another thing to notice is that no one recreated a lot of these things which used to be great about Facebook either.
The updated friends tab has been launched to users in U.S and Canada and it will now be including a feed of all of the posts, stories and Reels which have been shared by your connections in the app. It will also be including a module for birthday reminders while one also be able to access friend requests and see which of your friends are online at any given point of time. This would be putting more focus on friend engagement as compared to AI recommended content which is gradually encroaching on the main feed which is part of the company’s effort to bring back app’s original magic.
Facebook now intends to bring back what was great in the early 2000’s with the revamped friend feed is the first step in its old school Facebook revival. Things have not been good for Facebook as the Gen Z seems to have shifted towards Instagram which is simpler to work on. Let’s see if it works or not!
