Facebook puts news on the back burner as it continues to push video and creators

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

There is a mid-life crisis with user numbers declining and TikTok eating its Gen Z lunch. In response, the company is trying to push more video content from creators into users' feeds, and is now shifting resources away from more text focused products.

Campbell Brown told employees about the change in priorities in a recent memo. Brown said that the engineering and product teams at Facebook would spend less time on News and Bulletin in the future.

A spokeswoman for Meta told the WSJ that the company is committed to the success of creators and is doing more to ensure they can find audiences on Facebook and grow engaged.

The New York Times was paid by Facebook to aggregate their content. Deals with news outlets were worth millions of dollars while the News tab combined human-curated stories with recommendations. According to reports, Facebook is not interested in renewing these contracts, though the company has yet to make an official announcement.

The company attracted some big names for its launch, like best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell. Since then, the product has not made much of a splash, with Facebook emphasizing its slow and "meaningful" development. Half of the creators on Bulletin have over 1,000 free email subscribers, with many having more than 5000, which is a small number considering the size of Facebook.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that the focus has shifted. In June, The Verge reported on changes Facebook planned to make to its main algorithm, which would turn users' feeds into TikTok- lite by centering visual content from creators rather than friends' updates. It makes sense that news would be put on the back burner in a world of video.

Alex Heath reports additional reports.