Facebook Wants to Open Straight Into Video, TikTok-Style
A looming redesign, plus new Craigslist- and Reddit-like spin-off apps, shows how hard Meta is chasing the competition it once claimed to be ahead of.
Facebook is preparing to change the first thing you see when you open the app, and the change looks a lot like TikTok. Meta executive Tom Alison announced that Facebook will begin testing a "reimagined experience" later this year that drops a subset of users straight into full-screen video the moment they launch the app, according to the company.
That's a significant departure from the feed Facebook has run for most of its existence, and it's hard to read it as anything other than an admission that Facebook needs to look more like the app that's been eating its lunch.
Meta hasn't shown what the new interface will actually look like. What it has said is that the test will start in countries with a strong preference for video content, with a possible US rollout next year if things go well. The company's stated reasoning: video is increasingly where "conversations are happening, communities are forming, and even commerce is starting to take place," and Facebook risks getting left behind if it doesn't adapt.
There's real pressure behind that statement. Meta doesn't break out user numbers for Facebook specifically, but the company reported losing 20 million users across its platforms in the first quarter of 2026. Facebook still holds the title of the world's most-used social platform, with YouTube close behind and TikTok not far past that. TikTok's growth curve is the more alarming data point for Meta: it hit a billion monthly users just three years after launch, a pace Facebook never came close to matching.
From "TikTok is chasing us" to chasing TikTok
The shift is a notable reversal for Alison personally. Back in 2022, he told The Verge that he saw "TikTok chasing Facebook," not the other way around. The new full-screen video test suggests that framing hasn't aged well. Meta already ran this playbook once before, launching Reels on Instagram in 2020 specifically to blunt TikTok's momentum. Now it's applying the same logic to Facebook itself, its oldest and, in some ways, most set-in-its-ways product.
Building a Craigslist and a Reddit on the side, too
The video overhaul isn't the only place Facebook is borrowing ideas from competitors. The company is launching Seller, a standalone app built for people running shops through Facebook Marketplace. It gives sellers tools to track performance, manage their listings, and message buyers — the kind of dedicated seller infrastructure that Craigslist users have long had to piece together on their own.
That follows the earlier launch of Facebook's Forum app, which gives Facebook Groups their own dedicated space to interact, functioning much like a subreddit does on Reddit. Between Forum, Seller, and the video-first redesign, Facebook is essentially rebuilding itself as a collection of other platforms' best ideas, stitched together under one roof.
A free way to get verified
Facebook is also loosening up its verification system. Meta Verified, the paid subscription that includes a verification badge, starts at $11.99 a month. Now Facebook says users will be able to get a verified badge for free by completing what it calls a "simple selfie verification" process, aimed at confirming that a profile belongs to an actual person rather than a bot or fake account.
It's a smaller change than the video redesign, but it fits the same broader theme: Facebook loosening restrictions and adding new formats in an effort to keep people engaged and trusting the platform, at a moment when it's losing users rather than gaining them.
What to watch
The real test is whether the full-screen video experiment expands beyond its initial markets and actually reaches the US next year. Facebook has weathered platform shifts before by absorbing whatever made a rival popular — Stories from Snapchat, Reels from TikTok — and folding it into its existing product. This time, the company appears willing to rethink the front door itself. Whether that's enough to stop the user bleeding, or just delays it, will depend on how people respond once the test actually goes live.
