Facebook was a dorm room creation. Less than two decades later, Facebook is the largest social media on the planet, and among the largest internet services ever seen.
In line with Facebook that has rebranded to Meta, the company announced that the name of its controversial News Feed product has been changed. This time and for the first time since it was introduced to the platform in 2006, the social media said that it rebranded the old and stale News Feed, to just 'Feed'.
This feature is where users can endlessly scroll to see what their friends, family members and colleagues have shared.
According to the company's spokesperson, the change was made "to better reflect the diverse content people see on their Feeds," and that it "does not impact the app experience more broadly."
While the change is very subtle, in some ways, it's a massive shift.
First, Facebook is the largest social media platform, and one of the most visited places on the web. And Feed, is its main interface.
Second, the rebranding seems to reflect the social media's messy relationship with distributing news stories.
Facebook is among the places where fake news spread fast. According to various researches, misinformation can get significantly more engagement on the platform than fact-based reporting, and regulators have been looking into how big tech companies algorithmically rank content in their feeds.
For its part, Meta has said it’s working on reducing the amount of political content that shows up on people’s feed.
Starting today, our News Feed will now be known as "Feed." Happy scrolling! pic.twitter.com/T6rjO9qzFc
— Facebook App (@facebookapp) February 15, 2022
Third, while this 'Feed' is literally the same as 'News Feed', Facebook did make a slight tweak.
Back in 2006, Facebook didn't have a dedicated place for news, and this is why the platform puts all of its content in once place.
This time, Facebook does have a dedicated "News" tab.
In a memo to employees, Meta said that the “News Feed” name made people think it was a place for news stories instead of posts from friends.
So here, the rebranding of the News Feed is also an attempt for Facebook to avoid any confusion between the two feeds.