Facebook has tested Popular Photos, an Instagram clone with an infinite scroll of pictures, inside its own app in October
a News Feed without the exhausting links & text https://techcrunch.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Popular Photos is the latest entry in a long line of Facebook tests that port rival or sister-app formats straight into the main client: a Snapchat-style photo uploader back in 2015, then a dedicated video feed that same year, and in 2017 ephemeral Stories sitting atop News Feed. Each time, the pattern is the same — take the passive, visual, algorithmic consumption experience that works elsewhere and rebuild it inside Facebook's own app.
First-order effects
- Main-app users get an infinite scroll of photos with no links or text to parse, competing for attention inside Facebook itself rather than pushing them over to Instagram for that behavior.
- The test puts Facebook's own News Feed in direct competition with its clone surface: the same session now has two photo streams, and Popular Photos' engagement comes at News Feed's expense if it sticks.
Second-order effects
- Instagram becomes both supplier and competitor — the format it proved out gets absorbed upstream, echoing how its Stories copy cannibalized Snapchat's usage, while creators face two Meta surfaces rewarding the same photo content.
- A successful photos-only surface gives Facebook cover for broader News Feed restructuring, feeding directly into the later tabbed version of News Feed test that splits Most Relevant, Most Recent, and Already Seen into separate experiences.
Third-order effects
- Combined with plans to test a full-screen immersive video player that replaces the News Feed at app launch in select markets, the trajectory points toward the main Facebook app becoming a stack of recommendation-driven visual surfaces — with the traditional link-and-text feed demoted to one component among many.
- If the clone-and-absorb cycle keeps working, Meta's apps converge structurally: distinct products matter less than whichever owned surface best serves each passive-consumption format, raising the bar for regulators and advertisers who still treat 'Facebook' and 'Instagram' as separate inventory.
The trend: Facebook is progressively rebuilding its main app around Instagram-style visual and recommendation surfaces, absorbing the formats that made its sister product dominant.