If You Guys Were the Inventors of Facebook...
Well, I may have been overthinking it. A couple months ago, shortly after Mark Zuckberberg dropped a hint on Meta's earnings call that the company – and himself in particular – was thinking about ways to bring back "OG Facebook", I laid out one idea for how they might go about doing that. I thought my vision of a unified, and perhaps even federated, stream of social content from around the web was compelling in our age of increasing fragmentation (not to mention AI). But Meta, it seems had other plans.
So they asked themselves: Why not try building some features that resembled the Facebook of yore a bit more?
On Thursday, Meta did just that with a simple tweak. The company said the Facebook app would now include a separate news feed for users that featured posts shared exclusively by people’s friends and family.
The feature, called the Friends Tab, will replace a tab in the app that showed new friend requests or suggested friends. Friends Tab will instead show a scrolling feed of posts, such as photos, video stories, text, birthday notifications and friend requests. For now, it will be available to Facebook users only in the United States and Canada.
I mean. What? That's it?!
That's it.
“This idea of having a central place of what’s going on with your friends, that was like the magic of the early days of social media,” said Mr. Alison, who is head of the Facebook app. “We’re making sure that there’s still a place for this stuff on Facebook. It is something that shouldn’t get lost in the modern social media mix.”
A filter. They invented a filter.
In a way, they almost did the opposite of my idea. In that way, I'm impressed by myself in just how wrong I was. Honestly, I assumed you could basically already do this – it's sort of wild that you couldn't? But I guess that just shows how little I have used Facebook in the past several years. Sure, I open it from time to time. But that's mainly to clear out whatever ridiculous notification Meta has sent me. Or sometimes after a trip I'll upload some family photos so I don't have to send them individually to family members. I honestly think my current feed may be 100% ads. Because even the "friends" I see still posting I think are doing #sponcon. Anyway, silly me!
To be fair to Meta, it sounds like this may just be step one in a more elaborate strategy to bring back that mythical "OG Facebook":
And more changes to Facebook are likely coming. Meta plans to introduce other features and updates to Facebook in the coming year to make social media still “feel social,” Mr. Alison said.
“It is, frankly, core to Facebook,” he said.
Next up, we might see the poke come back. Then the like button. (Oh, that's still around?) After that, I'm feeling the first of fifteen privacy settings tweaks. Each one more confusing than the next. Then, naturally, Project Beacon.
If these guys were the inventors of Facebook, they would have invented Facebook. And since these guys were the inventors of Facebook, they invented Facebook. Again.
In all seriousness, is this really going to get different demographics using Facebook again? I mean, maybe? Though it's hard to see how this tweak entices younger generations to sign up and start using the service. But the cynic in me continues to believe that this is all mainly about keeping the cash cow well-fed from an engagement perspective, so that Meta can keep doing the things that they really want to be doing. You know, the things that are money incinerating, at least for now.
Yes, shifts like this may temporarily ding some level of revenue potential in that the content you view in your feed may go from 100% ads to a mere 95% ads. Alright, I'm being a jerk again, sorry. But presumably this will bring down Facebook's maximum revenue potential, but presumably that's also so that they can ensure that it doesn't collapse eventually if people really do stop engaging with their feed. In a way, they're just re-bundling again. This time, your friends.
Still, I like my idea more.
M.G. Siegler