Great piece by Ben Thompson:

Today, having a feed that users willingly return to day-after-day is the foundation of successful mobile advertising companies, especially Facebook. As I noted back in 2013 the feed allows for an advertising unit that is actually superior to anything found on the desktop: users have no choice but to at least visually engage with whatever is dominating the screen of the mobile device that is the center of their lives.

In fact, I would argue that the feed is so important that its development — or lack thereof — is the core reason why Facebook has soared over the last ten years, while Twitter has slumped after a beginning that suggested the exact opposite sort of outcome.

I still use Twitter more than Facebook, but I’ve slowly started adding Facebook back into my daily reading experience. Doing so required using the News Feed similarly to how I use Twitter.

That meant unfollowing basically everyone and then hitting the “like” button on feeds that I’m interested in; websites, bands, brands and people I actually like.

Now I have a news feed that’s actually a “News Feed.” It’s more closely tailored to things I’m interested in while supplementing my Twitter use quite well. Sometimes it’s even better.