Facebook is About to Get a Major Redesign
FACEBOOK IS ABOUT TO LOOK A LOT MORE TIKTOK-Y
The way that Facebook works is about to get a major overhaul.
In an effort to reverse the recent downward spiral of users, activity, and advertising, Facebook is reportedly going to look a lot more like TikTok very soon, and that may make it worth your time again.
Here's what's about to change (source: The Verge):
"The main tab will become a mix of Stories and Reels at the top, followed by posts its discovery engine recommends from across both Facebook and Instagram. It’ll be a more visual, video-heavy experience with clearer prompts to direct message friends a post. To make messaging even more prominent, Facebook is working on placing a user’s Messenger inbox at the top right of the app, undoing the infamous decision to separate the two apps eight years ago."
The design changes are important, but this is where it gets really interesting:
"In an internal memo from late April obtained by The Verge, the Meta executive in charge of Facebook, Tom Alison, spelled out the plan: 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."
There are many reasons for a brand to not use Facebook, but the one that has ultimately made the decision easy for many of us is the lack of reach and engagement. If this update does what Facebook says it will, the reach problem is about to change in a big way.
Facebook has been built on the idea that people go there to connect with the people and pages in their network. Content from outside of that bubble has to be either shared or promoted into your feed, which has caused a lot of people to experience a narrow view of the content that's out there, and led to a lot of criticism about the impact of the echo chambers it created.
By expanding the sources of content we see, Facebook will also be expanding the opportunities for the content that brands publish. On TikTok, it's not necessary to have a large following in order to become a popular account. The algorithm is set up to seek out and match content, which regularly results in posts from small accounts getting thousands, or millions, of impressions. The major difference, of course, is that Facebook has a two-tiered account system (Profiles & Pages), whereas TikTok still has just one account classification.
How will Facebook treat Page content vs. Profile posts? There's no telling yet, but two things are clear so far:
Facebook is about to undergo one of it's most significant changes to date
Reels & Story content are only going to get more important
INSTAGRAM ADOPTS TIKTOK'S FULL SCREEN FORMAT
For some IG users, the feed is going to look a lot more like TikTok as soon as this week. Last month Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, shared in a video what they had planned (watch it here) and just now we're starting to see it roll out.
The short story is that each post will take up more vertical real estate, and all content will be formatted vertically in the standard Reels 9:16 ratio. That almost certainly means that Reels and video content will continue to increase in importance, and that all posts should be be built to look good when cropped to 9:16.
Note: If you have an IG account and haven't gotten comfortable creating Reels yet, we recommend checking out @ReelsTips to help get you started.
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Written by Conner Galway, Junction Consulting