Facebook unveils redesign emphasizing friends and quality

Facebook is undergoing a big refresh that will put what its users still do most at the center of its app and website: message friends, share photos, and buy and sell things on Marketplace. The company is surfacing more people-first features in the app’s center navigation bar, rolling out quicker ways to like and browse photos, and refreshing search and comments to be less cluttered and feel newer. It’s a recalibration toward the mundane and the social, and at least one that keeps its pioneering app central to Meta’s strategy.

Marketplace moves to prime real estate in navigation

Marketplace will now live in the bottom navigation bar, instead of buried in secondary menus. That seems like a small switch, but placement shapes behavior: When TikTok moved certain key creation tools down into the bottom bar, session depth — the number of media photos a user captures per session — increased noticeably, according to several mobile analytics firms. For Facebook, the gamble is obvious — make local buying and selling just a tap away.

The data backs the shift. A report published by eMarketer indicated that more than half of American Gen Z Facebook users are on Marketplace, and Meta has said one in four young adult daily U.S. and Canadian users have recently used it. For small businesses that rely on hyperlocal reach and zero-fee listings, a higher ranking could open funnels without additional ad expense.

Photos and search get a familiar, more visual lift

Facebook is stealing the Instagram feature that made you, a dosser at heart, tap twice on photos to Like them and/or complete your stalker-ish duties. Photo posts will show in a more uniform grid in Feed, and tapping on an image will bring them to life in a full-screen, distraction-free viewer. The ambition is to minimize friction, so people spend less time searching for content and more time consuming it.

Search, too, is getting a visual refresh: an immersive grid for photos and videos as well as a full-screen results viewer, allowing you to explore the world without losing your spot. Pew Research has consistently found that “seeing photos and videos from friends and family” remains one of the top reasons people use social platforms, and these tweaks align with that behavior over time.

Friends and messaging take center stage in experience

A revamped navigation maintains the Profile tab and introduces a new Friends destination, mirroring Meta’s recent tests on Instagram that put an emphasis on DMs and close connections. People can customize the nav layout, which is an acknowledgment that power users have different behavior — creators here, local shoppers there, and group admins over there.

Profiles will include richer information about interests, hobbies, and travel, with a smarter layer on top: Tell the company that you are into home baking or taking vacation trips, and Facebook will direct your attention to friends who also might offer tips or join in. Importantly, users get to decide whether those profile updates appear in Feed — an effort to avoid burdening users with over-sharing fatigue, which many found off-putting.

Easier posting and more powerful conversation tools

The flows for creating Stories and standard posts are being tidied up, with music, friend tags, audience controls, and cross-post settings more front and center. That cuts down on the taps and toggles that can scare off those posting casually, especially among young users raised in the age of lighter-weight creation from short-form video apps.

Comments on Feed, Direct, and Reels will receive improved replies, enhanced badges you can see more easily (so that we know who the celebrities are), and tools for pinning comments, as well as a host of improvements to moderation. Users can also now flag off-topic or other comments anonymously, and creators and group admins get clearer controls to keep threads focused. Look for even more signal and less noise — particularly valuable in large public groups, where conversation threads can sometimes sprawl rapidly.

In the Feed, new prompts on comments ask people to share why they don’t like a post or Reel, giving more signals to the ranking system. Asked about the theory that personalization, which Meta has long prioritized, might prompt more nuanced negative feedback — and better satisfaction metrics like return sessions and time spent with friends’ content — Spiegel said that was “a good question.”

Why Facebook is taking this strategic bet right now

Meta’s social apps still count billions as growth in globally mature markets has plateaued, and attention is broken down across different short-form video and messaging platforms. Re-centering Facebook on friends, photos, and local commerce plays to durable strengths. Marketplace is a unique advantage — unlike most peer-to-peer platforms, it leverages existing social graphs and neighborhood groups to expedite trust and discovery.

The broader context matters. The company’s Reality Labs is posting multibillion-dollar annual operating losses, according to Meta’s financial filings, as infrastructure costs for AI climb ever higher. And optimizing the cash-generating core — ads around content and commerce — buys elbow room. Should these design changes improve Marketplace GMV and friend-driven engagement just a little bit, the implications for ad inventory quality and retention could be substantial.

Rollout details and what to watch for in coming weeks

The redesigned breakout will be available to users worldwide in the next few weeks. All of the navigation changes and a new search layout, double-tap likes, and comment section revamp are mobile-first, along with the revamped post-compose tool and Stories composer. As the update touches down, be on the lookout for Marketplace visits, time spent across Friends and messaging surfaces, as well as photo interactions — all signals that the new layout is performing according to plan.

For the payoff to users, the latter goal would mean essentially that it’s easier to find your people, share what matters, and trade locally — without friction. If Meta can turn those micro-optimizations into habit, the Facebook “back to basics” could quietly be the stickiest yet.