There was a time when Facebook was the social network almost all teens wanted to be. It was the perfect platform for connect with friends, share photos, videos, join groups and even spend hours in front of one of the integrated games. But years have passed, and this successful creation by Mark Zuckerberg is slowly entering a complex scenario: its user base is aging.

You don’t need to be an expert to know that Gen Z, and largely Millennials, are strongly influenced by offerings like TikTok and Instagram. Many do not have a Facebook account or have no intention of creating one. While the social network currently boasts about 3 billion monthly active users (MAUs), the growing loss of younger, trend-setting users is a problem.

Facebook needs to be rejuvenated

The Menlo Park company is trying to transform itself with its metaverse vision and other projects, as we’ve seen in the past months, but without giving up on its goal. flagship platform. Tom Alison, head of Facebook, admitted in an interview with the Associated Press that one of their goals is to “attract young adults” to the platform, and they are already working to achieve that.

The manager explains that teams have specific teams focused on developing projects to attract younger users for a long time. But two years ago, they realized they needed to make more radical changes. From that moment on, they started to change and develop their “whole product range” in line with their new goals.

According to Alison, Facebook aims to be a place where you can “connect with people you know, want to know, and need to know.” This mission statement The structure of the platform has changed many times in this two decades of life, but one of the most remembered is “giving people the power to share and making the world more open and connected”.

So how does Facebook plan to achieve its new goals? The company’s plan has two main aspects: artificial intelligence and messaging. Regarding the first, they are trying to optimize their recommendation algorithms to further increase video discovery. Vertical videos like those on TikTok or Instagram are a trend, and Facebook started adopting them in February of last year.

“We’re seeing more and more people want to share the Reels,” admits Alison. As a complement to this new method discover contentZuckerberg has given the green light to reintegrate Messenger into the Facebook app (ending the need for an additional app). The company’s idea is for users to find easier ways to share content they like.

It all goes to show that Facebook users will see more video content and more content from external sources (i.e. pages and friends they don’t follow). However, many details of the social networking strategy have not been disclosed and some questions remain on the table: is the platform redesign coming as well? What other measures will they implement? We will know as time goes on.

Images: beth mcdonald | goal | solen faysa

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