A leaked Meta internal memo from late April reveals the plan to entirely transform Facebook’s feed to become more TikTok-like. In addition, the company’s executives want to reintegrate Messenger back into Facebook’s main app, revealed a report.
The Verge obtained this leaked memo that shows the plans from the Meta executive in charge of Facebook, Tom Alison. The publication reported:
Rather than prioritize posts from accounts people follow, Facebook’s main feed will, like TikTok, start heavily recommending posts regardless of where they come from. And years after Messenger and Facebook split up as separate apps, the two will be brought back together, mimicking TikTok’s messaging functionality.
Facebook wants to combine recommended posts with Reels. The same already happens with Instagram, and it could help “reverse the app’s stagnant growth and potentially lure back young people.”
Alison put it bluntly to employees in a comment underneath his April memo I saw: “The risk for us is that we dismiss this as being not valuable to people as a form of social communication and connection and we fail to evolve.”
After getting the memo, The Verge was able to speak with Alison about the app’s plans, in which he acknowledges that the company was “slow to see the competitive threat of TikTok” and that Meta now “sees the video app as increasingly encroaching on its home turf of social networking.”
In practice, the future Facebook app will become a mix of Stories and Reels at the top, followed by posts its discovery engine recommends from across both Facebook and Instagram. The publication notes it’ll be “a more visual, video-heavy experience with clearer prompts to direct message friends to a post.”
In addition, Facebook is working to bring back Messenger’s inbox at the top right of the app, just like eight years ago.
The Verge story also brings more tidbits about how Facebook plans to do all that, plus the internal memo from Tom Alison. You can read it all here.
Would you think making Facebook’s main app more TikTok-like would make you go back to using it? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
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