The Facebook News Feed has been renamed ‘Feed’ by Meta. The brand is making the adjustment since the word ‘news’ in ‘News Feed’ appeared to be misleading for some users.
Some people feel that because the term “news” is used, there are only news stories in the mainstream.
Starting today, our News Feed will now be known as "Feed." Happy scrolling! pic.twitter.com/T6rjO9qzFc
— Facebook (@facebook) February 15, 2022
This decision may be interpreted as an attempt to distance Facebook from its reputation as a source of disinformation – they’ve physically removed the item from the news stream. However, in other areas of the programme, Facebook is doubling down on its aim to be a news provider. Facebook announced yesterday that it is introducing Facebook News in France. Renaming the news feed could help differentiate such items — which include updates from friends, groups, pages, events, and more — from the main Facebook News section.
According to the firm, Facebook News is a dedicated tab in the bookmarks part of Facebook that will highlight news stories from a varied range of credible and relevant news sources. As part of Meta’s continued commitment to journalism and content creation, this new tab will provide individuals with a dedicated location to seek for stories that are important to them, while also ensuring original reporting reaches audiences across the country.
A group of independent journalists will assist in the curation of France’s Facebook News to ensure “a fair overview of news published.” Furthermore, through Bulletin, its selected slate of newsletters, Facebook has become a publisher in its own right.
This update has been in the works for some time. They believe Feed is a more accurate representation of the wide range of content that individuals see as they scroll. This has nothing to do with the News Tab announcement in France.
Meanwhile, Facebook lost daily users worldwide, citing lower-than-expected ad growth, sending its shares down nearly 20%. The enormous stock plunge wiped off about $200 billion in market value in an instance.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, the Meta-owned Facebook network had 1.929 billion daily users, up from 1.93 billion in the previous quarter.
As of December 31, 2021, Facebook has 2.91 billion monthly active users (MAUs), a 4% growth year over year. In 2021, Meta still produced about $40 billion in profit, primarily from advertising.