Facebook brings Messenger back in app and focuses more on ‘recommended’ posts

Meta is going to bring Facebook Messenger back to the Facebook app. The message service is placed in the top right corner of the screen. In addition, the feed will change. It gets more posts, especially Stories and short videos, which the algorithm thinks users will find interesting.

Facebook moving messages

The reason for turning Facebook Messenger back into Facebook is that more and more people share content via instant messages, reports The Verge based on an internal memo and interviews with Tom Alison. Alison has been leading the development of the Facebook app since last year. Meta split Messenger from the Facebook apps for Android and iOS eight years ago.

The feed gets more recommended Stories and Reels, short videos like on TikTok. This should make it more interesting for users and increase the use of the feed. Those Stories and Reels come from accounts that users don’t follow, but whose content the algorithm thinks users will be able to appreciate. That too was taken from TikTok, which has been working with an algorithmic feed of accounts that people don’t necessarily follow since its inception. Based on how long users watch, the software tries to estimate whether users liked a video and want to see more of the same genre or account. Meta calls it ‘The Discovery Engine’.

Alison confirms the plans from the internal memo to The Verge. It is still unknown when Meta will implement the changes. The company says nothing about that. The same trend can be seen on Instagram, with the company increasingly recommending short videos and posts from accounts that users do not follow.