Facebook is set to launch a new ‘Friends’ tab aimed at enhancing user engagement by showcasing a dedicated feed of posts, stories, reels, birthdays, and friend requests from connections on the platform. This announcement was made by the company on Thursday. The new Friends tab, akin to Instagram’s Following and Close Friends feeds, will focus exclusively on content from users’ friends and will not include recommended posts. This initiative marks the beginning of a series of original features that Facebook intends to implement in the upcoming months.
Facebook’s Friends Tab Begins Its Rollout in Select Countries
In a blog post, Meta acknowledged that while it has introduced numerous features over time, the essence of connecting with friends has diminished. The introduction of the Friends tab aims to reinvigorate this aspect by spotlighting interactions with friends. Meta has indicated that the Friends tab is just one of several upcoming features designed to enhance the user experience this year.
Introducing the new Friends feed on Facebook
Photo Credit: Meta
The updated Friends tab will feature a vertically scrolling feed that presents content shared by a user’s friends. This includes typical posts, reels, birthday announcements, and stories that are available for 24 hours. The tab replaces previous features that displayed pending friend requests and suggested connections, known as People You May Know.
According to Meta, the new Friends feed will exclusively feature posts from users’ Facebook connections, meaning that no recommended posts will appear. However, details regarding the chronological arrangement of these posts in the revamped feed have not been disclosed.
Facebook is not the first of Meta’s applications to offer a dedicated feed centered on friends’ posts. In 2022, Instagram launched two separate feeds—’Following’ and ‘Close Friends’—to display content from users’ followings and close friends, respectively.
Currently, the new Friends tab is being rolled out to users in Canada and the United States. There has been no announcement about extending this feature to other regions, including India. For North American users interested in utilizing this feature, it can be accessed by navigating to their profile in the Facebook app, then tapping on Settings & Privacy > Settings > Tab bar to pin the Friends feed to their app’s navigation bar.
