Facebook has renamed its News Feed after 16 years. It made the announcement following its latest update.
The new name for the news feed to just “Feed”.
The surprise announcement marks a continuing push away from news in the News Feed.
Facebook has already created dedicated News tabs in several countries, most recently France.
And the app has previously said that it hoped to prioritise more interactions with friends and family.
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“Facebook News is a dedicated tab on Facebook in the bookmarks section that will spotlight news stories from a diverse range of reliable and relevant news sources,” said Facebook, explaining the News tab that continues to roll out.
“As part of our ongoing commitment to journalism and content creation at Meta, this new tab will give people a dedicated space to seek out stories that matter the most to them.
“Whilst ensuring original reporting is given a wider reach to audiences across the country.”
Facebook has come under significant criticism for its handling of news in the News Feed.
The app has been widely branded as a centre for fake and sometimes dangerous news.
Facebook is now shifting the focus on news to a portioned-off area of the app.
And the News Feed will now be known as just Feed.
“We’ve had this change planned for some time,” said Facebook.
“We think Feed is a better reflection of the broad variety of content people see as they scroll.
“This is not related to the News Tab announcement in France.”
The News Feed launched way back on September 6, 2006.
Prior to that date, users would have to visit each other’s “walls” to see new posts.
But the News Feed meant you could see a rolling list of activity that updated when new posts were added.
Then in 2009, Facebook users were given the ability to “like” pages – showing their content in the News Feed too.
In September 2011, Facebook changed News Feed so that you could see “top stories” – rather than posts in pure chronological order.
After criticism during the 2016 US Presidential Election, Facebook vowed to clean up the News Feed.
“We’re making a major change to how we build Facebook,” said billionaire founder Mark Zuckerberg in early 2018.
“I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions.”
This included prioritising content from friends and family members.
And it prioritised news articles from “local sources”.
The latest change was the switch from News Feed to just Feed.
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