Facebook’s News Feed is going away. But in name only. Facebook tweeted the news yesterday that the News Feed will now be known as “Feed.”
The Feed will now be the place where users scroll to see the latest updates from family, friends, groups, brand pages and, of course, ads. Exactly the same as it was yesterday, except today it has a different name.
Facebook didn’t announce any changes to the Feed algorithm. So this one seems to be a simple cosmetic change. Facebook introduced the News Feed in 2006.
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The death of “News.” So why drop news? Back in October, Facebook the company became Meta, so this could be part of the company reexamining all of its products and making sure they have the correct name.
But, more likely, this is just an attempt for the social network to distance itself from the word “news.” Facebook came under massive pressure with the rise of “alternative” news and misinformation being spread via its platform. Social media is the primary way many people get news, and Facebook’s reach is an astonishing 2.9 billion users. Facebook is a regular source of news for 36% of Americans, according to Pew Research Center.
Perhaps this is how Facebook will attempt to say, “we’re not a news source.” After all, now they don’t have a News Feed. It’s just a Feed, you see. But you can be sure the Feed will continue to be full of news stories that will spark arguments among friends and families for years to come. They may as well have renamed the Feed to the Argument Zone if they were looking for an accurate name.
Why we care. Because names matter. Whenever the Facebook Feed comes up in conversations with your clients, bosses, or peers, you don’t want to be referring to the Feed by its old name. It’s like how people still use the term Google AdWords, even though AdWords was rebranded as Google Ads in 2018.
