Facebook is bringing the chronological feed back to its apps

Facebook has bowed to pressure from users and is bringing back the chronological feed so users can see updates from friends in the order they were published. 

The social network is rolling out a new tab called ‘Feeds’ for desktop and its iOS and Android apps, which shows the most recent posts from friends, groups and Pages. 

It’s also renamed the Facebook app’s primary tab – the first thing users see when they open the app – ‘Home’.   

The Home tab will continue to order posts by ‘relevance’, based on its algorithm, along with personalised recommendations of who to follow. 

Facebook hopes that separating the news feed into Feeds and Home will help it better compete with its trendier rival TikTok. 

TikTok uses a fine-tuned algorithm to determine what people want to see based on prior activity – something Home is likely to become increasingly similar to.

The social network is rolling out a new tab called 'Feeds' for its iOS and Android apps, which shows the most recent posts from friends, groups and Pages

The social network is rolling out a new tab called ‘Feeds’ for its iOS and Android apps, which shows the most recent posts from friends, groups and Pages

HOME VERSUS FEEDS

Home shows users algorithm-driven recommendations on anything that might interest Facebook users. 

Feeds, by contrast, shows the most recent posts from friends, Favorites, Pages and groups, starting from the most recent. 

With Feeds, Facebook can curate a ‘Favourites’ list of friends and Pages that they care about most and filter their content.  

‘Suggested For You’ – posts from accounts that users don’t follow that appear based on prior activity – will appear in Home and not in Feeds. 

However, adverts will appear in both Home and Feeds. 

Meanwhile, Feeds will hark back to how Facebook appeared more than a decade ago. 

Facebook used to have a chronological news feed, but from 2011 this was phased out and replaced with algorithmically-driven content and most popular posts from friends nearer the top. 

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, the company that owns Facebook, said the introduction of Feeds comes in response to user requests. 

‘One of the most requested features for Facebook is to make sure people don’t miss friends’ posts,’ Zuckerberg said on his Facebook page. 

‘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.’ 

Feeds has already started rolling out to Facebook users globally, and all users should be able to see it on the Facebook apps for iOS and Android  app in the next week. 

It will then arrive for Facebook on desktop in the ‘next several weeks’, a Meta spokesperson told MailOnline. 

Feeds appears as a tab in the shortcut bar. On iOS, this bar is found at the bottom of the app, and on Android, it's at the top

Feeds appears as a tab in the shortcut bar. On iOS, this bar is found at the bottom of the app, and on Android, it’s at the top

TikTok (pictured) uses a fine-tuned algorithm to determine what people want to see based on prior activity

TikTok (pictured) uses a fine-tuned algorithm to determine what people want to see based on prior activity 

Feeds appears as a tab in the shortcut bar. On iOS, this bar is found at the bottom of the app, and on Android, it’s at the top. 

Although Feeds is designed to provide users with an easy way to access content in chronological order, users can also curate a ‘Favourites’ list of friends and Pages that they care about most and filter their content.

‘Suggested For You’ – posts from accounts that users don’t follow – will appear in Home and not in Feeds. However, adverts will appear in both Home and Feeds.

Home will also show Reels, Facebook’s blatant attempt to replicate TikTok’s video experience, and Stories, its clone of Snapchat Stories. 

With Feeds, Facebook can curate a 'Favourites' list of friends and Pages that they care about most and filter their content

With Feeds, Facebook can curate a ‘Favourites’ list of friends and Pages that they care about most and filter their content

In a blog post, Meta described Home as a ‘discovery engine’ for users to find and follow new content through recommendations. 

‘Home is the starting point for connection, entertainment and discovery on Facebook,’ Meta said in the post.

‘From Home, you can also create a Reel, see what your connections are sharing on Feed and in Stories, and build community over new and shared interests.’ 

Meta said the tabs in the Facebook app – including Home, Feeds, Watch, Groups and Notifications – change position based on which one is used the most. 

To keep a tab from moving about, users can also personalise and pin a tab in their shortcut bar, making its placement permanent. 

Facebook is giving users more control at a time when it has been struggling to grow, partly because other social media platforms such as TikTok have become more popular, particularly among young generations. 

That stagnation, in turn, is making it more difficult for corporate parent Meta to boost its profits from the digital ads that appear in users’ feeds. 

In February, Zuckerberg revealed Facebook had seen a decline in daily users for the first time in its history – squaring the blame largely at TikTok. 

ZUCKERBERG BLAMES TIKTOK AFTER FACEBOOK LOSES USERS FOR THE FIRST TIME 

In February, it was revealed that Facebook lost daily users for the first time in its 18-year history in the final quarter of 2021, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes was caused by the TikTok boom.

The social media giant’s earnings report sent Facebook shares plunging $20, wiping more than $200bn off the company’s market cap and erasing $29bn from Zuckerberg’s net worth.

Facebook reported a drop of nearly 500,000 in daily logins during the last three months of 2021.

‘People have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time, and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly,’ Zuckerberg said at the time. 

Zuckerberg reiterated that Meta – the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – is pushing hard to develop its short-form video Reels in an effort to compete with TikTok.

‘This is why our focus on Reels is so important over the long term,’ he added.   

Read more 

source: dailymail.co.uk