The long-drawn battle between TikTok and Facebook to become the number one app with the most engagement continues. Previously, TikTok and Google were at loggerheads as Youtube announced their staggering number of active monthly users.
Meta, Facebook & Instagram’s parent company, has decided to take TikTok heads on. Facebook is planning to redesign its feed and make it more videos oriented. They are also planning to tweak their algorithm a little bit. This does sound a lot like TikTok, and that’s what the company is trying to do here by competing directly with the Chinese media giant.
Currently, Facebook’s home page feed only focuses on showing the users, people, and pages they follow. They plan to tweak the app in such a way that the algorithm will push new types of content or new creators to the users. The promoted content will still be something that the user cares about. Reports state that Facebook’s goal here is to shift the app into a ‘discovery engine’, similar to TikTok’s ‘For You’ feed.
“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.”
Tom Allison told The Verge.
This design change also looks to bring back Facebook and Messenger as one entity, as they were separated to be two apps, eight years ago. The interface of the app will be made more visual and appealing aesthetically as well as Facebook’s main tab will have a mix of stories and reels above recommended posts. Instagram has already taken this route and has started emphasizing on videos more. Recently, they extended the reel time and also introduced a new feature of pinning your posts on your profile.
Speaking about the same to CNBC, TikTok’s president of global business solutions, Blake Chandlee, spoke about this comparison and said, “ Facebook is a social platform. They’ve built all their algorithms based on the social graph. That is their core competency. Ours is not. We are an entertainment platform; The difference is significant.” Mr. Chandlee, before moving on to TikTok in 2019, was an executive at Facebook for more than 12 years, leading their global partnerships.
Tom Allison, Meta VP in charge of Facebook, believes that their company failed to take notice of just how big of a threat TikTok was becoming. It’s interesting to see this race between the top apps in the world, trying their best to get their user’s undivided attention. TikTok is smartly trying to avoid the situation by stating that they just want to entertain people and nothing else.
