Why Facebook loses cultural relevance, by Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg is concerned about the cultural relevance of Facebook for years.

The April 2022 emails between Zuckerberg and Tom Alison – Meta Facebook chief – were presented in court this week during the FTC antitrust trial against Meta.

The main subject of email exchange: how to keep Facebook relevant.

“Even if the commitment of the FB application is stable in many places, it seems that its cultural relevance decreases quickly and I fear that this is a main indicator of future health problems,” wrote Zuckerberg.

He added that even if Instagram and WhatsApp worked well, he did not see a way to success for Meta if Facebook has vacillated.

Only a few months before these emails, Facebook had largely deployed rolls, its short video product like Tiktok. While Zuckerberg declared in emails that he agreed with the recent change of Facebook resources to coils, he wanted to “make sure that we have a unique vision” for the Facebook application.

So what’s wrong on Facebook, then?

According to emails, here is what affected the cultural relevance of Facebook at the time:

1. The classic Facebook act “friend”, someone seemed to have lost their brilliance. “First, many graphics of friends of the person are expired and not filled with people with whom they want to hear or connect,” wrote Zuckerberg, adding that the act of friendship with someone also felt too “heavy goods vehicles for users. “Do you want to be considered someone adding friends to FB, or do you prefer to be seen adding the person on IG?” In the same time, Zuckerberg presented three options to Alison who could help the relevance of Facebook, including a “crazy idea” to wipe the graphics of people of people and make them start from scratch.
2. People turned to other platforms, such as Instagram, to follow friends and public figures. Zuckerberg himself admitted that he was more likely to follow MMA surfers or fighters on Instagram or Twitter. “All other modern social networks are built on follow -up rather than friendship, it therefore seems possible that the FB application is just outdated because it has never adopted this fundamental innovation,” said Zuckerberg.
3. Facebook’s attempt to focus on communities with groups still needed work. “I am optimistic about community messaging, but after having run in FB groups for several years, I don’t know how much we can push this,” said Zuckerberg. “It is possible that the groups are never as tall as friendship / follow -up, and that many group behaviors pass to messaging anyway.”
4. His push in a short video necessary to feel more socialAnd also unique to Facebook. Zuckerberg said that even if Facebook’s push has been good for redoing interesting content in the flow, “this reduces the social feeling of feeling connected to the person who creates the content”, especially if they were not made on Facebook. Alison responded to Zuckerberg in an email that the “problem with Facebook is that we do not have a culturally relevant public content ecosystem as a reference line because it is mainly composed of new commanded and video editor.”
5. Facebook has a litany of competitors – even his own brother, Instagram. Tiktok, YouTube, Twitter and Reddit all came to the exchange. Small social applications have also been referenced, such as applications for sharing friends Bereal and Poparazzi. But one of the most interesting competitors was Instagram, especially since its Facebook acquisition is at the heart of the FTC case against Meta. (It seems that the best leader of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, was important on these emails.) “The differentiation between IG and FB is important, but I think that we must find a strategy that does not leave a service to collect the remains that the other service leaves behind or to have an artificially or unreasonably compensating service,” wrote Zuckerberg. “Right now, IG is doing well on cultural relevance and FB is not, so I focus more on the search for a reasonable path in the longer term FB.” Nothing like a little rivalry between brothers and sisters.