Facebook announced this week that it is overhauling the design of its newsfeed to elevate content from “creators” over posts from friends and family in an effort to draw users away from platforms like TikTok.
The Washington Post reports that Facebook announced this week that it is overhauling the design of the newsfeed on its primary social network in an attempt to attract users from competing platforms such as TikTok. The new format will see content from creators featured more prominently over posts from Facebook users’ friends and family.
Facebook said that users’ default screen on the app, the Home section, will display entertaining posts from creators and provide access to Facebook’s short-form videos service known as Reels as well as its video and photo collection service, Stories. Users who want to see posts from friends and family will find these posts on a new “Feeds” tab.
Mark Zuckerberg said in a post: “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. But the Feeds tab will give you a way to customize and control your experience further.”
Facebook (now known as Meta) has been heavily investing in its video products in an attempt to compete for younger users’ attention over the Chinese-owned video app TikTok by Bytedance. Zuckerberg has said that investing in and making money from its Reels products is a top priority for Facebook.
During the final quarter of 2021, Facebook announced that it lost daily users for the first time in 18 years. In contrast, TikTok has seen its U.S. user base reach 110 million this year.
Read more at the Washington Post here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan