Mark Zuckerberg understands that many of us have had enough of influencers and stuff we don’t care about forced onto our feeds by the algorithm.
On Thursday, Meta announced the launch of the Facebook Friends tab, a toggle that serves up friend-related content (stories, reels, posts, birthdays and friend requests) instead of recommended content.
“The new Friends tab is a throwback to OG Facebook when you only saw friends’ status updates,” Zuckerberg said in a post. “More OG Facebook coming soon,” he wrote, adding a flexing arm.
Meta says that the Friends tab is “available initially through the navigation bar on your home Feed and can always be accessed in the Bookmarks section of the app.” To pin this feed option, take the following steps:
- Click your profile picture in the Home feed.
- Click “Settings & Privacy,” “Settings” and then “Tab bar.”
- Choose to customize the bar, then click “Friends” and pin the tab.
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The Friends tab has garnered a lot of chatter on LinkedIn, with some people calling the move “too little too late.”
“For years now, Facebook has all but stopped showing posts from your friends – instead, it’s full of ads, posts from groups, ads, Reels, and more ads,” said consultant Emil Protalinski. “The problem is that this has driven people away from Facebook, and let’s be honest: OG Facebook is not going to suddenly bring them back. I appreciate Meta trying to go back to the basics with a Friends tab on Facebook, but this is too little too late.”
Others, however, are excited to see if the move will embolden people to use Facebook again.
“This is an interesting move from Meta, who has been managing multiple trends in social media, from the need to compete with TikTok to the growing audience desire for more intimate experiences not so heavily shaped by algorithms,” wrote Digital Strategist Nick Dotson. “This new feature addresses the latter trend. It will be interesting to see whether users use this new feature. Do you want to see more content from your Facebook friends?”