Facebook Reels adds feature to control what you want to see
Facebook owner Meta Platforms announced a new feature for Reels that will allow users to vote for what content they would like to see more of and what content they do not want to see on their feed.
The feature will allow users to select a ‘show more’ option, temporarily increasing the ‘ranking score’ of the Reel and similar Reels to show more of that content to the user.
Alternatively, users can select a ‘show less’ option from the menu, which operates similarly to temporarily decrease the ranking of similar content.
Meta said this feature will help make Reels smarter and more attuned to users’ preferences.
Users will need to click on a three-dot “kebab” menu at the bottom of the video player for the options to appear.
Facebook launched Reels in September 2021 as an experiment into providing a designated short-format video service.
This was to compete with TikTok, a social media platform specializing in short-form vertical video owned by Chinese tech company Bytedance.
TikTok launched in 2016, merged with Musical.ly in 2017, and became hugely popular through the initial stages of the Covid-19 pandemic.
TikTok was the most downloaded app in the second quarter of 2020, edging out Zoom, the online meeting platform.
Meta pushed hard for the uptake of Reels when it was first launched by launching the Reels Play bonus programme, which allowed popular Reels creators to earn up to $35,000 (R649,000) a month.
This payment structure was launched in December 2021 and was recently paused by Meta, as it said it would be ‘evolving’ the programme. The company seems to be phasing out the bonus programme.
Meta announced that Reels are shared across the platform 2 billion times every day. This is a doubling over the last six months.
Other new features
Meta announced more changes to Reels.
It changed the way that Reels will surface on Facebook Watch by adding Reels to the main navigation of Facebook Watch and allowing for scrolling from long-format videos to Reels.
It said this would allow more seamless access to Reels on the platform.
In addition, Engadget reported that Facebook would introduce tags on Reels to provide more information on why a Reel is appearing on your feed, such as whether a user’s friend liked the video.
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