It kind of feels like every social media platform is taking parts from one another until they all feel pretty similar. Facebook is no different, as it’s often keeping an eye on other social media platforms for features to use on its own platform. Now, Facebook has published a big blog post on all the features it’s planning to add to the service, and some of them may feel a little familiar.
Facebook Is Now Getting an Explore Tab
As announced on the Meta Newsroom, the company is rolling out some new features to Facebook. One of them is called “Explore,” and you can stop me if this sounds familiar:
Explore is designed to show you content that doesn’t just entertain, but helps you dive deeper into your interests, get inspired by real people and expert communities and take the next step. It’s unique to each person’s interests, and we use a wide variety of signals to power our algorithm so that your content will reflect the things you’re into.
It’ll be interesting to see how Facebook creates its own version of TikTok’s For You Page with the user data it has on hand. However, given how TikTok already gives users tools to customize their FYP, Facebook may need to keep adding features to it before people fully warm to the Explore tab.
Speaking of taking notes from TikTok, Facebook is also adding a way to watch Reels as a continuous, full-screen feed of videos, which uses recommendation technology to figure out what you want to watch next. Facebook notes that “Young adults on Facebook spend almost 60% of their time on the app watching videos,” so it’ll likely be a hit with people who enjoy scrolling through Reels.
In a similar vein, Facebook is also launching a “Local” tab that collects events and meetups that are nearby. The feature is only available in Austin, New York City, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Chicago, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, San Francisco, and Phoenix for now, but it may be a nice way to see what’s happening in your area.
Facebook Is Making Finding and Managing People Easier
Moving on from the feeds, Facebook is also getting some nice tools for people management. You can now send invites to a Facebook event via SMS or email, to which people can reply without needing a Facebook account. You can also send out invites to your Instagram followers if you’ve got something really big planned.
Also, Facebook is making joining Groups a lot easier. The admin of a group can set up a tool called “Group AI” that knows about all frequently asked questions and group information. That way, if you want to ask a question about the group but don’t want to pester the admin, you can shoot the bot a message instead and it should help you out. It’s currently only available in the US and Canada, but given that there are plenty of benefits to Facebook Groups, we may see this rollout worldwide soon.
