Facebook refreshes its app in an attempt to encourage new content discovery
- Thursday, July 21st, 2022
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Facebook has given its app a refresh. The first thing users will now see when they open the app is the ‘Home’ tab, from where they can access Reels and Stories and also find new content. Facebook said the the Home tab will “more of a discovery engine for you to find and follow new content and creators through recommendations”.
Facebook has also introduced a new ‘Feeds’ tab, which it describes as “a new way to find the most recent posts from your friends, Favorites, Pages and groups”. In other words, people the user is already connected with. Users can curate a Favorites list of the friends and Pages they care about most and filter their content in this tab. There are no ‘Suggested For You’ posts in Feeds and ads are included. The updated look is being rolled out from today and over the course of the next week.
Facebook said the Home tab will be uniquely personalized to each user through its machine learning ranking system. This system, it said “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. Were investing in AI to best serve recommended content in this ranked experience.”
In a post on Facebook, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote: “One of the most requested features for Facebook is to make sure people dont miss friends posts. So today were 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 youll care most about. But the Feeds tab will give you a way to customize and control your experience further.”