When we think of Facebook, a 20-year-old social network, the first thing that comes to mind is its popularity among ‘young people.’ Naturally, Meta wants to change that, and the company is once again telling the world that it is changing the direction of its platform to appeal to its demographic.
in Tom Alison, who leads the Facebook app for Meta, says the service is changing to reflect “an increased focus on young adults” compared to other users. “Facebook is still for everyone, but for the next generation of social media consumers, we’ve made important changes with young adults in mind,” he wrote.
If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because Meta executives have been trying to woo “young adults” for years to better compete with TikTok. Mark Zuckerberg has said almost before that he wants to make young adults the company’s “North Stars.” And both Alison and Zuckerberg have been talking about the Facebook app becoming feed-based rather than user-connected.
That change is now well underway. Alison said the company’s AI advancements have already improved recommendations for reels and feeds, and that “advanced recommendation technology will support more products over the next year.” He added that as more users share videos, private sharing between users is also increasing (although there is no word on any plans to bring messaging back to the messaging app).
Notably, Alison’s memo makes no mention of the “metaverse,” which Zuckerberg once saw as a key part of the company’s future. Instead, he says “leaning into new product features enabled by AI” is an important goal, along with luring younger users. This isn’t surprising, considering that Meta and Zuckerberg have attempted to leverage some of the company’s Metaverse ambitions with recent AI advancements.
But it’s unclear how successful Meta will be in its efforts to win over young adults. Alison said Facebook has seen “five quarters of healthy growth in youth app usage in the U.S. and Canada,” reaching 40 million daily active users, but that’s less than the company’s reported 205 million daily Facebook users in the U.S. This is still a relatively low percentage. In February, she last analyzed the number of users for the app.
