Facebook is changing its algorithm in an attempt to capture the same magic as TikTok, according to leaked internal emails.
Like TikTok, Facebook’s main feed will start recommending posts regardless of whether or not you follow the account, as well as mashing together Messenger and Facebook in the same app, years after separating the two. It will also put Reels at the forefront of Facebook, after importing it from Instagram. The main fact will blend news updates, and Reels.
The Meta executive in charge of Facebook, Tom Alison, was clear in his orders to mimic TikTok, writing under his original email: “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.”
“I think the thing we probably didn’t fully embrace or see is how social this format could be,” he later told The Verge, who first leaked Alison’s memo.
“Stories is really the way that more people are sharing with their friends,” he explained.
“What we’re really finding is that people want to connect over content. And so a lot of where we’re going with Facebook is trying to bring you the best content that’s going to really cater to your interests, but then making it super easy to share that and discuss and connect with other people in your network over that.”
Internal workers worried about the changing, with one employees responding to Alison’s original email:
“I think there’s a real risk in this approach that we lose focus on our core differentiation (the social graph and human choice) in favour of chasing short-term interests and trends.”
Alison countered: “We are always going to prioritise things that you want to share with your friends,” he says.
“I think the main thing that’s going to change is we’re not really going to put too many limitations on when and where we show recommended content in Feed, which frankly we have in the past.”
