For years, Facebook has felt like social media’s weakest link. It’s known for weird AI-generated pictures, Minion meme pages, and that one friend who still thinks poking is a valid form of communication. But it’s also a bit of a sleeping giant, with Meta’s Reels amassing 200 billion daily views.
So, as Facebook and Instagram are regaining cultural relevance with Reels, Meta is upgrading Facebook’s video feed.
In a new blog post on April 3, Facebook made it clear that it’s getting ready to challenge TikTok. It is launching a new feature called ‘Vertical First.’
The full-screen video player will be consistent across all of Facebook’s videos. Reels, longer videos, and Live videos will now all appear uniformly.
The vertical video player also boasts features like a slider to skip portions of longer videos. In addition, it allows users to pause, jump back, or jump forward in ten-second intervals.
Facebook says you can also expect to see more relevant video recommendations and content that aligns closer to your interests.
As well as being a really obvious bid to attract younger social media users back to the platform, Facebook has really committed itself to prioritizing creators with this update.
“More types of creators will have more opportunities to tap into additional audiences they might not have reached before,” Meta said in its blog post.
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