# Meta Seems to Deliver Again ‘OG Fb’ With Revamped Pals Tab

Fb’s seeking to get again to its roots of connecting family and friends, with the addition of an up to date tab for friend-only content material, which it hopes will spark extra engagement between individuals within the app.

As you may see in these instance screens, Fb’s up to date pals tab, which is being launched at this time to customers in the U.S. and Canada, will now embody a feed of the entire posts, tales, and Reels shared by your connections within the app. It’ll additionally embody a module for birthday reminders, whilst you’ll additionally be capable to entry pal requests, and see which of your pals are on-line at any given time.

Conceptually, that’ll put extra concentrate on pal engagement, versus the AI-recommended content material that’s step by step encroaching on the principle feed.

Which Fb says is a part of a broader effort to carry again the unique “magic” of the app:

“Connecting with pals has been part of Fb because it launched. Through the years, Fb developed to satisfy altering wants and created best-in-class experiences throughout Teams, Video, Market and extra, however the magic of pals has fallen away. We’ll be including a number of “OG” Fb experiences all year long, starting with the revamped Pals tab.”

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has additionally supplied his personal rationalization for the change in an interview with YouTube stars Colin and Samir:

“Fb began off as this on-line listing for individuals to get to know the individuals round them of their communities, [and] then it form of developed on this course that one a part of it, which was sharing and Information Feed, simply fully outscaled, and ended up being crucial a part of the product. And we simply targeted on that, and now we’re right here, 21 years later, and that feed half within the sharing ecosystem is utilized by three billion individuals all over the world. Individuals spend a number of time on it, they take pleasure in it, however this humorous factor occurred, which is that a number of the opposite sort of enjoyable and helpful components of the unique expertise, we simply form of did not focus as a lot on. And never solely did we not concentrate on them as a lot, however I sort of look across the web at this time, and I understand that nobody else truly recreated a number of these items that was fairly magical about Fb both.”

As such, Zuck and Co. are actually seeking to carry again what was nice about Fb within the early 2000’s, with this revamped pal feed being step one in its “old fashioned” Fb revival.

Which looks like an fascinating concept, prompting extra pal engagement within the app that everyone is on, by giving it extra particular focus.

However will it truly work?

Nicely, no it received’t.

Little question Meta has achieved its analysis, and has its causes for attempting out this new experiment, however there are numerous causes by “OG” Fb went away, and it’s not simply because Fb determined to cease prioritizing pleasant interplay.

For one, no person posts on Fb anymore. Your folks are posting approach much less, and as such, your feed of devoted pal content material goes to be fairly naked, and fairly unengaging to start out with.

It additionally received’t be the principle feed, and most of the people received’t hassle to faucet throughout from the principle feed to the devoted pals tab. And in the event that they do, they received’t discover a lot content material, giving them much less cause to return again.

The initiative additionally misses the truth that most individuals stopped sharing on Fb as a result of it acquired boring, it acquired divisive to share your opinions (and get criticized, usually by family and friends for such), and all of us moved to smaller personal messaging teams as an alternative to keep away from the publicity of the principle feed.

Nowadays, persons are much more prone to share in personal than they’re in public, and I don’t see how a devoted pal feed adjustments that.

Lastly, there’s additionally Meta’s current shift carefully insurance policies, which can see extra political content material returning to person feeds, and fewer friction in re-sharing of misinformation, with Group Notes unlikely to discourage a few of the most controversial dialogue factors.

Political posts are an enormous a part of the explanation why individuals stopped posting on Fb, so seeking to put extra concentrate on pal posts, whereas additionally bringing again political content material looks like a harmful combine. And never, primarily based on traits, a very participating one.

Total, there’s no cause to assume that this will likely be a big replace, however Meta appears eager to push this rosy view that Fb is all good, and an awesome place to hang around, and overlook the rise in misinformation because of the swap to Group Notes.

Yeah, I don’t see it, however Zuckerberg says that there’s extra to return in its new OG Fb revamp.