The Facebook News Feed is disappearing… but just in name. The social network has announced that it is renaming it “News Feed” to ease branding…
Facebook’s “News Feed”? it’s all over
Facebook’s ‘News Feed’ has become a thing of the past. Hereafter it will be known as “flow”. In some ways this is a huge change, as Facebook is one of the most used platforms in the world and Feed is its main interface.
From Groups to Messenger, Stories, Facebook has many other well-known features. But when you think of Facebook, what you think of most of all is its News Feed, which is The main interface that everyone sees every day.
Facebook’s News Feed is probably the most powerful tool on the web. It is no exaggeration to say that the News Feed has changed the world.
From now on, Changes its name from news feed to feed, The feed will now be where users scroll to see the latest updates from family, friends, groups, brand pages, and of course, ads. Exactly the same as yesterday, except today it has a different name.
But why this name changed?
Facebook became a company meta in October 2021. So that may be part of the company’s change to re-examine all of its products and make sure they have the correct name.
At the same time, Facebook decided on this change because the mention of “News” in the “News Feed” was apparently confusing to some. As The Verge’s Alex Heath reports, the appellation “news” has led some to believe that the main feed consists only of reports, not necessarily posts from friends.
The move could be interpreted as an attempt to strip Facebook of its reputation as a propaganda hub. They literally took the news out of the news feed. But in other areas of the app, Facebook doubles down on its desire to act as an information source.
Incidentally, Facebook announced the launch of Facebook News in France on February 14, 2022. So renaming the News Feed may differentiate these posts – including updates from friends, groups, pages, events and more – from the current Facebook News section.
“We have been anticipating this change for some time. We think the feed better reflects the wide variety of content people see as they scroll. It has nothing to do with the News Tab announcement in France,” said a Facebook spokesperson.
However, it is clear that Facebook wants to divert the attention of users from the news. In September 2021, researchers demonstrated in a report that fake news drives far greater engagement on the platform than official news. The research prompted inquiry into how Facebook could benefit from the platform’s algorithms swinging toward sensationalized misinformation.
Will this name change affect your experience on Facebook?
But technically, practically, the update makes no sense. In a press release, Facebook reiterated that:
“This is simply a name change to better reflect the diverse content people are seeing on their feed. This is only a name change and does not affect the app experience more broadly. »
It therefore has no effect on what News Feed is or does, and will not change the News Feed (now “Feed”) algorithm or change your experience in the App.