facebook today announces a series of updates to its platform, many of which focus on removing users from their social bubble of friends and family.
Among the updates are new tabs being added to facebook that are intended to show more content to users, including recommendations based on a person's location. A new “Local” tab will collect content from other facebook surfaces, such as the Marketplace resale platform, local groups and events, essentially what looks like facebook's version of Nextdoor. The Local tab is being tested in 10 US cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Austin, Texas.
facebook will also begin testing an “Explore” tab, which sounds similar to the instagram feature of the same name: a personalized page with photos, videos and other recommended content that's unique from person to person. The company says the Explore tab will be based on user interests and display content from “real people and expert communities,” such as travel tips and DIY tutorials.
Another new tab points to TikTok. facebook is adding a full-screen video stream that resembles TikTok's For You page, bringing together short, long, and live videos in one place. Over the past few years, tech companies have chased TikTok, introducing more short-form video content and recommendation-based feeds. facebook says young adults on the platform now spend 60 percent of their time watching videos and promises a “turbo” recommendation algorithm in this new feed. In other words, this is facebook's attempt at creating a hyper-personalized For You page.
Messenger will also receive a major update in the form of Messenger Communities, a feature that looks similar to Slack or Discord. With Communities, users can create multiple chat rooms based on different topics that fall under a broader scope: for example, an incoming college class group with different chats for announcements, campus news, or student clubs. These chats can be created without having a facebook group that members are a part of.
The rise of TikTok has moved many social media platforms away from showing users content posted by their friends, family and existing networks and toward showing content shared by accounts they don't follow, which an algorithm predicts they might enjoy. Meta has also indicated in recent years that it is moving in this direction on both facebook and instagram, where the amount of recommended content has continued to increase.
