Meta is reshaping Facebook after TikTok's model – Test in India

TVS News AI, editorially supervised, presents Meta is reshaping Facebook after TikTok's model – Test in India.

Imagine tapping the Facebook icon – and instead of the familiar timeline, you land directly in an endless stream of vertical videos. That's exactly what Meta is currently testing with some users in India, according to reports from The Verge.

The report is the clearest example yet of a trend that has been shaping the tech world for years: the "TikTok-ification" of social media. Since the short-video app disrupted the mainstream, virtually every major platform has tried to copy the recipe. In its current overview, The Verge lists YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, Snapchat Spotlight, Netflix Clips, and LinkedIn's vertical video feed. Add to that lesser-known attempts like Triller, Zynn, and Byte.

What Meta is specifically testing in India

According to a TechCrunch report picked up by The Verge, some users in India are currently getting a version of Facebook that catapults them straight into a full-screen video feed when they open the app. Exactly what appears first there remains unclear from the available excerpt of the report. But the direction is clear: Meta is going a step further than before – moving away from the timeline as the starting point toward an experience that looks confusingly like TikTok.

On a video course for a while now

That Meta is pushing in this direction is nothing new. As The Verge writes, Facebook and Instagram have been mixing more and more video into their users' feeds for years – chasing the success TikTok has racked up with vertical short clips. With Instagram Reels, Meta has long had a TikTok answer within its own ecosystem. The India test goes one step further: not Reels as an additional feature, but a start screen that goes all-in on video.

What you'll notice from this

For now, the test is limited to some users in India. Whether and when it will come to Europe or the US does not emerge from the available report. What's still worth noting: Meta is one of the companies most consistently bringing the TikTok principle into its existing apps. The new test is the clearest evidence of that so far.

Source: The Verge (based on a report by TechCrunch)