Something to look forward to: Remember when Facebook used to show content from your friends? Seeing posts from people you know is becoming increasingly rare these days as the main feed gets clogged with recommended content from accounts you don’t follow. But the social network is bringing back the core experience that made it so popular in the first place with the introduction of a revamped “Friends” tab.
Facebook today isn’t the platform it once was. Many people complain that they rarely spot posts from actual friends on their feeds, lost in an algorithmic sea of sponsored content, group posts, and other recommendations from various pages and accounts – most of which elicit a “why am I being shown this crap?” response.
It seems that Meta has taken notice of the complaints. “Over the years, Facebook evolved to meet changing needs and created best-in-class experiences across Groups, Video, Marketplace and more, but the magic of friends has fallen away,” the company writes in a new announcement.
To try to bring back its original appeal, Meta is adding several so-called “OG” Facebook experiences throughout the year. The first of these is a new Friends tab.
The Friends tab is currently used to view friend requests and friend suggestions (People You May Know). The replacement will show all your friends’ posts, stories, reels, and birthdays, while friend requests will continue to be found under this section.
The updated Friends tab is rolling out now in the US and Canada. It can be accessed from the navigation bar on the home feed and can be found in the Bookmarks section of the app. You can also pin it to your navigation bar in the app by clicking on your profile picture in the Home feed, selecting Settings & Privacy, Settings, then Tab bar, choosing to customize the bar, clicking Friends, and pinning the tab
This isn’t the first dedicated friends section Facebook has introduced. Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated a dedicated feed for friends’ content, shown in reverse chronological order, in 2022. It’s still available in the app, though getting to it requires going through the Feeds menu.
It’s unclear what other “OG” experiences Facebook will be bringing back. The Poke feature was made more prominent in 2024 – will Pet Society and Words with Friends make a return?
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