Facebook has updated its news feed so users can have a customizable chronological feed for important life updates, a design decision that appears to draw inspiration from TikTok’s interface and may be an attempt for the older social network to compete with the surging video app.
The social platform announced an update to its mobile homepage on Thursday, dividing user content into two different tabs. While most users will log into the home tab, which features algorithmically chosen content for the user, they will also have a chronological feed that can be customized with updates from family, friends, and favorite pages.
“One of the most requested features for Facebook is to make sure people don’t miss friends’ posts,” said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in a Thursday post. “So today, we’re launching a Feeds tab where you can see posts from your friends, groups, Pages, and more separately in chronological order. 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.”
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The feeds tab design choice reverts to Facebook’s previous operating style — it relied on a chronological feed in 2011 before changing to an algorithmic feed.
“Your Home tab is uniquely personalized to you through our machine learning ranking system,” Facebook told the Guardian. “This system takes into account thousands of signals to help cut through the clutter and rank content in the order we think you will find most valuable. We’re investing in AI to best serve recommended content in this ranked experience.”
“While Home is where you’ll increasingly find community through your passions and interests, you can continue to stay up to date on the people and communities you care about most in Feeds,” the company added. The two feeds resemble TikTok’s “following” and “for you” page interfaces, which allow users to see content chronologically or algorithmically.
The change will have a notable effect on the way Facebook introduces content to users. While advertisements will still appear on the feeds tab, they won’t for “suggested for you” posts. This change could discourage marketers from trying to game the website’s algorithms to get many views on their posts.
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The new tabs should start appearing on the Facebook app on Thursday and will roll out across the globe over the next week.
