Facebook News Feed
The Facebook news feed is a groundbreaking innovation that Facebook initially rolled out in 2006. Soon it became one of the most popular destinations on the internet which allowed people to seamlessly connect with their friends and acquaintances. One of the most attractive features of Facebook was that it allowed users to share updates about their daily lives. Facebook also offered tons of content for users from the brands they followed. These features played a crucial role by which Facebook won dominance in advertising. Also, here are few tricks on how to create the best Facebook ads. However, change is inevitable.
There have been several mishaps that crippled the popularity and reliability of Facebook over the past few years. Privacy issues, misinformation, and a decrease in original content were few of the issues that Facebook had to battle with. Facebook also admitted that News Feed can impact the mental health of an individual negatively.
Life After the Facebook News Feed
A study that was conducted by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology is relevant in the current scenario. It demonstrated that a weak relationship between the users can gradually kill a social network. The study further revealed that a social networking platform tends to grow cluttered in content. This was apparently true in the case of the Facebook news feed. Mark Zuckerberg later admitted that Facebook failed to fulfill its primary objective, which is to enable people to stay connected.
Rise of Story Format
While the popularity of News Feed continued to decline, a new format started to rise the story format. The story format was initially rolled out by Snapchat, a mobile social networking application. The story format allowed the users to generate linked content, that could be shared for a time period of 24-hours. Another advantage of the story format was that the content could be viewed any number of times over a period of 24 hours. Soon, the popularity of story format skyrocketed and gradually it became the default format for sharing content over social media platforms. It was estimated by a consulting firm known as Block Party estimates that approximately one billion accounts use story format daily. Zuckerberg himself acknowledged that soon story format will become a bigger medium than the news feed.
The Upcoming Shift to Stories
Facebook is running a number of experiments in its platform, realizing the upcoming trend of using stories for sharing content. Facebook has already added a story preview tiles, located on the top of the news feed so that users are encouraged to create stories on their phones. These experiments are to help the users of Facebook familiarize with the story format. It has been revealed that 47% of the users of Instagram find stories a reliable and authentic and reliable medium for communication with friends and acquaintances.
However, there are numerous obstacles that are ahead of Facebook before shifting to stories as the primary medium for content sharing. A vast majority of Facebook users still do not use the stories feature on the platform. Instagram now allows you to cross-post your Instagram stories on Facebook, which is a favorable step towards popularizing stories across Facebook. The shift is happening gradually but steadily.
