Facebook returns to its origins by prioritizing posts from friends and family

Last year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and one of his top EUs, Tom Allison, were discussing how to rebuild Facebook for the future of social networking.

Zuckerberg, who grew Facebook to a $1.5 trillion company renamed Meta from the dorm room project, wanted to regain some of the original rationales for social networks, or what he called the “OG Facebook” vibe, Alison said. After adding many years of features, executives felt that some of Facebook’s important features were dead.

So they asked themselves: Why not build some features similar to old Facebook?

On Thursday, Meta did it with a simple adjustment. The company now includes a separate news feed for users, featuring posts shared only by people’s friends and family.

A feature called The Friends tab replaces the app’s tab that displays new friends’ requests or suggested friends. Instead, Friends Tab will display a scroll feed of posts such as photos, video stories, text, birthday notifications, and friend requests. For now, Facebook users are only available in the US and Canada.

“We’re looking forward to seeing you in the facebook app,” said Allison, head of the Facebook app. “We’re making sure there’s still a place on Facebook for something like this, something you shouldn’t get lost in the modern social media mix.”

The new feed is a sudden departure from the way social media has evolved over the past decade. The rise of apps like Tiktok has become accustomed to seeing feed posts from influencers and content creators. Other companies followed suit. Meta’s apps, including Instagram, have begun to lean more towards recommended content to attract people for a longer period of time.

Now people see apps like YouTube, Instagram, Tiktok as something similar to TV.

Not everyone is welcoming shifts. When Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004, it was intended to help college students connect with friends on campus. As the app becomes more popular, it is now helping all users stay up to date with posts from friends and family.

So, when Zuckerberg announced in 2022 that Meta would insert recommended content on Facebook from people who were not connected to users, many users rebelled. Many people first discovered recommended content – it relied on surface suggestions – it was jarring. After some criticism, Zuckerberg slightly reduced the amount of such content added to people’s Facebook feeds.

Still, that didn’t stop meta from accepting algorithmically recommended content. In recent years, much of the people’s feed on Facebook and Instagram has been dominated by creators, businesses and brands. Recommended content such as Meta’s video product, Reels, has led people to spend more time on the app, the company said.

Meta has no plans to stop adding recommended content to users’ feeds, Alison said in an interview. For now, the company doesn’t think The Friends Tab is more popular than the recommended home feed.

And there could be more changes to Facebook. Meta is planning to bring in other features and updates to Facebook next year, making social media still “social,” Alison said.

“Frankly, it’s the heart of Facebook,” he said.