Facebook wants to be TikTok so badly

If your great-aunt wants her garden photos at the top of your feed, she’s going to have to learn Adobe Premiere Pro. That’s because Facebook announced a major makeover of its feed yesterday in order to capture a chunk of the burgeoning creator economy and its younger audience. Like every other social media company, it wants to grab the TikTok magic.

Users’ “Home tab” will now prioritize short-form, algorithmically recommended video content from creators, while family and friends’ posts will appear in a separate “Feeds tab.” Instagram is also adding more TikTok-like features to Reels, which already was the app’s TikTok clone.

That basically signals the end of the News Feed, reflecting a hard shift from Zuck’s dream of being a news hub. Since 2019, Facebook has paid $10+ million a year to news orgs for content without paywalls. But on Tuesday, Facebook’s parent company Meta told employees that it would be reallocating resources from Facebook News and Bulletin, its independent creator newsletter platform that was just released last year, to new video-focused creator products.

Bottom line: Facebook is working to transform its leaking core social media platforms while it waits for Zuck’s VR glasses to get better. The company reported its first daily user loss in its history (18 years) last February.