Sources: Facebook is working on Collections, a feature to showcase lists of curated content from publishers directly in the News Feed
Facebook is working on a new feature that will showcase lists of curated content from publishers directly in the News Feed, according to two people familiar …
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2016 report is the first sighting of what became one of Facebook's recurring product instincts: wrapping publisher content in its own curated containers. The arc runs from these early Collections plans in the News Feed, through Stories Highlights borrowing Instagram's collection format in 2018, to human-curated surfaces like the journalist-staffed Top News section planned for the news tab.
What makes the original Collections report worth revisiting is how much of it came true in mutated form: by late 2018 Facebook had made Collections shareable for gift ideas and shopping lists, turning a publisher showcase into a commerce-adjacent feature, and by 2021 it was building newsletter tools with follower-building and paid subscriptions — each step moving curation further inside Facebook's walls.
First-order effects
- Publishers gain a new News Feed surface where their content is packaged into editorially shaped lists, trading some brand identity for distribution inside Facebook's own framing.
- Users' feeds begin mixing algorithmic posts with deliberately packaged bundles, giving Facebook another lever over what gets surfaced and in what context.
Second-order effects
- Once collections exist as objects, they drift toward user-facing uses — the 2018 shareable version for shopping and gift lists shows the format pulling Facebook toward commerce and away from pure publishing.
- Rival platforms face pressure to offer comparable curation surfaces, since whoever owns the packaging layer also owns the ad inventory around it.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, platforms progressively absorb the curator role that publishers and editors once held — a trajectory visible again in Facebook's later moves to hire journalists for its news tab and court writers with newsletter tooling.
- The structural endpoint is intermediation: publishers supply raw material while discovery, packaging, and increasingly monetization happen on the platform's terms.
The trend: Social platforms are steadily internalizing content curation — first repackaging publisher output, then staffing it and monetizing it themselves.