Facebook Introduces Friends Tab Without Recommended Content
Facebook will introduce a new 'Friends' tab that is designed to show you a feed of posts, stories, reels, birthdays, and friend requests from your Facebook connections, the company said on Thursday. The new feed will is similar to the Following and Close Friends feeds on Instagram, and will not display any recommended posts. The new Friends tab on Facebook is the first of many "OG" features that the company plans to roll out over the coming months.
Focus on Friends
In a blog post, Meta explains that while Facebook introduced several new features over the years, "the magic of friends has fallen away". In order to bring the focus back to friends, the company has introduced a new Friends tab, which it says is one of many upcoming features and experiences coming this year.
Revamped Friends Tab
The revamped Friends tab will now show you a vertically scrolling feed of content posted by your friends on the platform. This includes standard posts, reels, birthdays, and stories that disappear after 24 hours. The tab previously displayed pending friend requests, or suggestions —also known as People You May Know. Meta says that it will only show you posts from your Facebook connections in the new Friends feed, which means recommended posts won't be displayed at all. However, the company hasn't revealed whether posts will be displayed in a chronological order on the redesigned Friends feed.
Facebook isn't the first Meta-owned app to introduce a dedicated feed that only displays posts from friends. Instagram rolled out two feeds 'Following' and 'Close Friends' in 2022, displaying posts from people you follow and your close friends, respectively.
Rollout Details
The company says the new Friends tab is rolling out to users in Canada and the US, and there's no word from the company on whether it plans to bring the feed to other regions, including India. If you're a North American user, you can visit your profile on the Facebook app, then tap on Settings & Privacy > Settings > Tab bar to "pin" the new Friends feed to your navigation bar in the app.
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