Facebook's Newest Feature Might Make Me Want To Use It Again
Facebook is going old school with its latest update: a Friends tab that only shows updates from ... More actual friends.
Four days ago Facebook introduced a brand new feature that's actually kind of old: the Friends tab. It's a tab that … wait for it … only shows updates from your actual Facebook friends. If you thought that was kind of the idea of a social network, you've likely been dissatisfied with your social media options lately.
As Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg referenced when he announced the new feature on his personal Facebook account, it's OG Facebook: social media like it was back in 2006. I've been playing around with it for a while, and it just might make me want to use Facebook again. And apparently, there's more where that update came from.
'The new Friends tab is a throwback to OG Facebook when you only saw friends' status updates,' Zuckerberg =AZVGeX0-4OIP6p3yocr-Vj1LrQm3KD56P0TH1FzYmPh7mKMRThecNCmq1qiW-mHVYaOMeSNSTQeQ_BolYfV7cpfIZxdo6yT0Lxd-WKhlznZfD5uMHupOrJPt7D5ZZT-ngZbjpnZIZ7xrIMZWv1nuTqcO&__tn__=%2CO%2CP-R">says. 'More OG Facebook coming soon.'
Like many in my friend group, I've been increasingly disenchanted with a social network that seemed to show nothing from my actual friends. As I scroll the default tab of Facebook right now, the third item is People You Might Know. The very next one is a post by a politician I do not follow: essentially a free ad. The very next item is an actual ad for a flight club, followed by two updates from friends, yet another ad (this time for a car), a friend's post, and then some influencer's post with video of the US president talking about Ukraine and 'the rare earth deal.' Scrolling farther, I see updates from groups I do not follow (hello, The Onion and The Liberal Agenda, plus Meanwhile in Canada and The Guardians of Democracy, among others) more ads, posts from news organizations I do not follow, and yes, a few lonely friend updates mixed into the mess.
In other words, the social network that I use to stay connected with friends has perhaps 30% friend content at most on the default feed. That's abysmal, if you're looking to use a social network … as a social network.
The new Facebook Friends tab, which only shows content from people you've chosen as friends on the ... More platform.
The new Friends tab is the second from the left at bottom, and it changes all of this. At least 90% of the content in the Friends tab is actual, real, true friend updates, interspersed with the occasional bit on friend requests and 'people you may know.'
Facebook is still kind of trying to trick you, however.
As usual, when Meta releases a new product, the ads don't surface until much later. (Think Threads, where I'm still not seeing ads.) The new Friends tab doesn't have a lot of ads yet. In fact, I still haven't seen an ad on the Friends tab, which makes the experience amazing, in fact.
But that will not last, of course. The first hit is free, as per usual, and after the honeymoon period, ads will intrude into the Friends tab too.
However, it's still going to be a better experience than all the unwanted groups, public figures, and influencers intruding into the main Facebook tab.
It's clear why Facebook did what it did to the main tab. Political discourse and curated most-engaging content that makes it out of the Darwinian struggle to be seen on the multi-billion-personal social network is probably more likely to grab the average person's attention over Uncle Bob showing off his new lawnmower. Getting more users, getting them to spend more time in the app, and showing them more ads is how Facebook makes more money.
The problem is that those of us who don't go to Facebook to see the latest political 'news' from your friendly neighborhood outrage factory, or what Random Nature Group 3 just posted, would rather just see what our actual friends and relatives are up to. After all, that's arguably the primary purpose of a social network: not the news, not the blather, not the noise.
Judging by the reactions to Zuckerberg's post, many agree.
'I just can't wait for this OG comeback,' says Aku Sunshine. "It's been long overdue."
'By OG you mean how it should be,' says Rich Steele.
'That's a great throwback!' says Leona Scott.
'98% of my newsfeed is just ads and influencers I don't follow and don't care about,' says Jenny Lynn, highlighting the need for the new Friends tab. 'If I want to see friends' posts I have to navigate to their pages individually. Facebook has become too time consuming and exhausting. No wonder so many people are leaving the platform.'
I'm sure the very reason Zuckerberg and company released the new Friends tab is that they saw people spending less time on the platform as well as using the Friends-only view that you could previously get on the desktop web version of Facebook.
And that their hope is to keep those of us who liked the old version of Facebook better on the platform, one way or another.
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