Tik Tok has Changed Facebook

Aug 25th, 2022

One of the things I talk a lot about is Facebook’s algorithm. How does Facebook decide what content you see on your newsfeed? Over its lifetime, as Facebook changed, so did its algorithm. What was once a social networking site that promised to connect you to friends and family eventually became a platform for big content creators. The decade of 2010–2020 was the decade of content creators for Facebook. Maybe you will remember it — how scrolling through your Facebook news feed meant cycling through content from the same few creators. A couple of years ago, Facebook updated this algorithm to show you more content from more creators, effectively giving smaller creators better chances. And now, amidst Facebook’s slowed growth around the world — the first quarter of this year was Facebook’s first ever where it lost users — Facebook is turning to the best practices of Tik Tok.

The Golden Rule

Before we get to the main topic at hand today, we must first look at the foundational philosophy for social media platforms. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok make money by selling ad spaces. Unlike newspapers and TV, where ad spaces are limited, there are potentially infinite ad spaces on social media. The only thing Facebook has to do is keep you online for as long as possible. Therefore, the golden rule of social media is that platform algorithms will help content and creators who help keep users online. And they punish content and creators who take people off their platforms. What this means in practice differs by platform. Reddit makes the bet that your interests will keep you on their platforms. So, the platform presents itself as a collection of communities and forums. Twitter used to bet that the people you follow would keep you on their platforms.

How Does Tik Tok Work

Tik Tok works a little differently. A running meme on Tik Tok is to pretend that the Tik Tok algorithm is an all-knowing power, the equivalent of the powerful “universe” or “God” that shows you exactly what you need to see at that moment. So, you might find some videos on your “For You” page that say, “if you are seeing this, you need to hear that you are doing your best and maybe things aren’t going your way right now, but they eventually will.”

Tik Tok makes the bet that your interests will keep you on the platform. However, unlike Reddit, which assumes that you know what your interests are — since Reddit lets you choose the communities you are part of — Tik Tok bets that you don’t. Or that, you have many smaller interests you are not aware of. For example, I would have never thought to enrol myself into a “sandwiches from around the world” community on Reddit. But thanks to Tik Tok, now I know I like that.

Tik Tok’s algorithm automatically “tags” videos based on interest categories. When you watch a video, you become associated with that category. The more videos you watch with similar tags, the stronger your relationship to that category becomes, and you become more likely to see future content from that category.

Of the various bets that social media platforms have made on implementing the golden rule, for right now, it seems that Tik Tok’s bet is generating the best returns. And it hasn’t gone unnoticed by other companies. Twitter, for example, now shows less content from people you follow and more content from categories you’ve shown an interest in. And now, Facebook is following suit.

Friends and Family

Facebook began as a social networking site that promised to connect you to friends and families. This was the early days of social media internet when monetisation of platforms was rudimentary and things like algorithms were a little less important. Mark Zuckerberg was probably sincere in his stated goals of connecting people.

However, as monetisation came to Facebook, so did the need to think critically and implement business strategies like content algorithms. The decade of 2010–2019 was mostly dominated by bigger content creators/pages. It was a safe bet for Facebook. Pages like 9GAG and if you’re in Bhutan, Kuensel were guaranteed to keep people online for a long time. They did not need to worry too much.

But it also meant that smaller creators were frustrated. The algorithm made their chances of becoming content creators extremely difficult. A change was necessary, and that happened sometime in 2020. If you go and scroll through 20 posts on your Facebook newsfeed right now, you’ll probably see about 9–15 different creators. This was the result of that 2020 change. Facebook is trying to give all creators — big or small — a chance to go viral with their posts.

What’s Changing

Another change that you might have noticed recently is that Facebook is now showing content from pages/people you don’t even follow — right on your newsfeed. This is a big deal. The newsfeed has almost always been a place where you see the content you want to see/from people you selected. In the past, if they did show you some unexpected content, they were sure to tell you why you were seeing it. Maybe it was “suggested for you” or maybe it was because you friend “commented on this post.” Thanks to Tik Tok’s viral popularity and threat to Facebook, everything is changing now.

Facebook is also expected to roll out changes to the newsfeed to copy Tik Tok’s. Soon enough, your newsfeed will mostly feature content from sources you don’t know — but thanks to the algorithm, you can rest assured you will enjoy all of this content.

In shorter words, Facebook is not a social networking site anymore. It is a content arena — much like YouTube or Tik Tok, and make no mistakes about it. It is all Tik Tok’s doing!