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When you think of the 20-year-old social network Facebook, what 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 intends to reorient the platform to appeal to that age group.
in Tom Allison, head of Meta’s Facebook app, said the service is shifting to reflect a “growing focus on younger demographics” compared to other users. “Facebook is still for everyone, but we’ve made significant changes with younger people in mind to build for the next generation of social media consumers,” Allison wrote.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because Meta executives have been trying for years to win over “young people” to compete with TikTok. Mark Zuckerberg has previously said he wants young people to be the company’s “north star.” And both Allison and Zuckerberg have talked about shifting the Facebook app to be more of a feed, rather than one based on user connections.
That transition is now well underway: Allison said the company’s AI advancements have already improved recommendations in Reels and Feed, with “advanced recommendation technology powering even more products over the coming year.” He added that they’ve also seen an increase in private sharing between users, with more users sharing videos (though they didn’t mention any plans to bring messaging back to the main app).
Notably, Allison’s memo makes no mention of the “metaverse,” which Zuckerberg also once saw as a central part of the company’s future. Instead, he says “leaning into new product capabilities enabled by AI” is a key goal, along with attracting younger users. That’s not surprising, given that Mehta and Zuckerberg recently touted some of the company’s metaverse ambitions as AI advances.
But it’s also unclear how successful Meta will be in its efforts to win over young people. Allison said Facebook has seen “five quarters of healthy youth app growth in the U.S. and Canada,” reaching 40 million daily active users, but that’s still a relatively small percentage of the 205 million daily Facebook users in the U.S. that the company reported in February, when it last released user numbers for its apps.