Facebook will be more and more like TikTok: all the changes that will come to the social network

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s obsession with countering the current TikTok craze led him to make a drastic decision: Change the way posts are displayed on Facebook. It will now be similar to the popular Chinese app.

Within the next week, the card Facebook Home it will no longer only show photos and videos of your friends and family, but also will include external content selected by an algorithmthat is, posts from creators or companies that are not part of your contact list. The latter is called by Meta as “Tips for you”.

This new section will be led by Facebook algorithmsthat track your activity on the social network to show you “posts that might interest you”, now too outside the network of contacts. It is precisely this feature that bears similarities with TikTok, the social network of the moment, compared to the original Facebook.

TikTok has what is known as “the formula of instant attraction”which is very effective in retaining users.

The heart of the social network of the Chinese tech company ByteDance is its powerful recommendation algorithm. When a user logs into the app, the Home tab shows videos from people you don’t know, a combination of viral and curated content according to your interests.

A Facebook more like TikTok

Although the company gradually launches an alternative for all those users who want to bypass a part of the algorithm. It’s a new tab called Feedwhich will include posts from friends, groups and pages in chronological order.

the so-called Facebook feed it will be something like the tab “Recent”to see the contents in chronological order of our contacts, but this new option promises to be more visible and customizable. “The Feed tab will give you a way to further customize and control your experience,” says Mark Zuckerberg in a post.

Precisely, the customizable aspect of the new Feed tab is that it allows us to select a list of friends and favorite pages, then apply a filter to see their posts only.

The Feed tab will appear at the bottom of the Facebook app on iOS and at the top of Android.

Meta assures that these changes will begin rolling out globally next week, although they may reach a limited number of users early.

The app’s shortcut bar, where your feeds will appear, will change based on the tabs you use the most. However, users will have the option to block one to make its location permanent.

Why Meta is changing Facebook

Despite being the social network with the largest number of active users in the world (2,936 million), competition with the Chinese social network is increasingly fierce.

In early 2022, the platform lost users for the first time in its history, and younger people are showing a particular interest in other alternatives. In this context, like Instagram, also owned by Meta, and TikTok, owned by the Chinese giant ByteDance, in the case of the latter, also to search.

That’s why Mark Zuckerberg urged to transform Instagram to win over TikTok users. For example, adding Reels and Remixes (Duo, on TikTok) and refining their algorithms, changes that have had some impact on their oldest social network Facebook as well.

SL