Facebook wants tiktokize. The tiktokizer that the tiktokice good tiktokizer will be. This is what some employees of the social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg may think, who have recently received new directives from the management with a very specific mandate: make the app look more like TikTok.
From Facebook they carefully examine the innovations of TikTok to emulate and adapt them
Instructions in this regard have been distributed through an internal circular sent last April in which Tom Allison, Meta executive in charge of Facebook management, explained the plan, consisting of reinforce the contents that appear on the timeline based on the recommendations they haveinstead of prioritizing its origin.
From Instagram (belonging, like Facebook and WhatsApp, to Meta) some of the most popular functions in TikTok (including Reels) have also been imitated and it is that behind everything is the purpose of staying as close as possible to theeithers mutable interests of social network users.
In this way, any sufficiently successful change will soon be imitated to try to retain its own users by offering them, in the same ecosystem to which they already belong, options such as those they can find in the competition. However, TikTok itself is also inspired by the rest, as happened with its Reposts, a thinly disguised version of Twitter retweets.
From Facebook it is recognized to have offered a late response to the evolution in the tastes of the users in relation to the factor of “video content discovery engine” that TikTok has represented. The importance of communication through private messages within TikTok is also highlighted, which could also have an echo on Facebook.
And it is that another of the changes that would come to Facebook, in this evolution to become more similar to TikTok, would mean taking a step back with respect to the split that took place at the time by breaking off the messaging of the social network itself, developing Facebook Messenger as a completely separate and independent platform from the social network, to the point of having its application differentiated. A shortcut to the Facebook Messenger inbox could now be highlighted at the top of Facebook again.
The future Facebook could have a specific tab for Stories and Reels, followed by a thread of content that would be discovered for the user based on recommendations, promoting the videos and especially highlighting the possibility of sharing the videos through private messages with the rest of the users. It would be about personalizing the experience (as in the “For you” section of TikTok) of the content that is shown to the user, making irrelevant if you follow the creator of the content.
Voices of protest have emerged from some Facebook employees in a double sense: the social network would be being too aggressive in its strategy to “look like TikTok” and it would also be moving away from one of its objectives, which is to strengthen the connection between family members. and friends. Something that would disappear if the display of content generated by unknown people is privileged.
