If you log into Facebook today you may notice there is a slight difference to the homepage. The famous Tinker feature has officially been removed from the right side of your News Feed.
Tinker was the box in the upper right-hand corner. It summarized what your friends had been liking, commenting on and doing on Facebook. A member of the Facebook team has confirmed that the feature is “no longer available.” The news isn’t that surprising since there have been reports of it missing from some News Feeds over the last few weeks. The official decision to remove the Tinker was made a week ago, but Facebook slowly rolls out product changes, so the change didn’t hit everyone at once.
Why the change?
The confirmed reason for getting rid of the Tinker is unknown. Usually, Facebook gets rid of features that aren’t being used or aren’t progressing the way they had hoped. The Tinker was first launched in 2011 when Facebook first launched their algorithmic News Feed. It allowed for posts that seemed most relevant and interesting to you or that had a lot of engagement to appear in the sidebar. However, there was a lot of controversy surrounding it. People considered it to be the “creeper feed” since it showed exactly what your friends were doing. Facebook did create an option to mute it or turn it on, but that option is now gone. This may be one of the reasons for the sudden change.
Another reason may also be that Facebook is focusing on new ways to share content. According to TechCrunch, “Facebook is using its new mission statement to spearhead a more proactive stance about how and what news and other information get shared on its platform.” They are also focusing more on Facebook Stories and video content as a whole.
There will probably be a variety of changes and new features that Facebook will implement. Social media is continuing to be on the rise and is changing the game for how we communicate and how marketing is done.
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