Facebook’s Plans To Change Your Feed Forever

A leaked internal memo reveals Facebook’s near-term plans to restructure its main feed around video content, such as Reels and stories. Facebook plans to turn its main feed into a ‘discovery engine’ for video content, according to an internal memo sent to employees.

The buzzword Facebook is throwing around to describe its vision of turning the feed into a discovery engine. There are three near-term priorities that will help Facebook realize its vision:

-Make Reels successful.

-Build world class recommendations technology.

-Unlock messaging-based sharing.

Turning Facebook into a ‘discovery engine’ simply means recommending more content from accounts users aren’t connected to. Historically, Facebook has prioritized content published or shared by connections like friends and family. Unconnected content has never been a focus of Facebook’s feed. Turning the feed into a stream of endless discovery means it will have to pull in content from all over the Facebook network.

How Does This Satisfy Facebook’s Top Three Priorities?

1. Make Reels Successful

While Facebook plans to enhance the discoverability of all content, it identifies its biggest gap as short-form video. To fill that gap, Facebook is making Reels more discoverable by integrating the short videos in more sections throughout the website.

2. Build World-Class Recommendation Technology

To accomplish its goal of becoming a discovery engine, Facebook plans to develop a recommendation system that’s responsive to peoples’ interests, able to identify trending content, and capable of making responsible selections.

3. Unlock Messaging-Based Sharing

People are increasingly sharing and discovering content privately through messenger, rather than publicly in the main feed. Facebook plans to lean into that by enabling more ways to share content through its messaging apps.

What Will The Facebook Feed Look Like?

The best way to prepare for this change, if Facebook is a priority for you and your business, is to get comfortable with creating and publishing more short form video. While Facebook will continue to surface text and photo posts, they’ll be ancillary to the main attractions of Reels and stories. More videos also means easier discoverability on the platform.