Compilation/Qiaofeng
Focus:
·The average age of Facebook users continues to decline, which is much faster than the growth rate of the average age of the population. In the long run, Facebook will lose the younger generation.
·In 2017, talented young engineers trained by Facebook changed jobs Google Facebook really understands the situation, which is a question related to whether it can attract a whole generation of people.
·In the era of mobile phone selfie, filter and camera roll, pictures and videos are in full swing, but Facebook is still dominated by text content, so it is no wonder that young people continue to "run away".
On October 29, Beijing time, Mark Zuckerberg officially announced at the Facebook Connect meeting that he would change his company name to "Meta".
Zuckerberg said: "Metaverse is the next frontier, so the company will take the meta universe as the first rather than Facebook as the priority."
Now the symbol "∞", which looks like an infinite loop, has replaced the like icon of the company's iconic thumb on the doorplate of its global headquarters in Menlo Park.
It is reported that the name Meta means "the future" and is intended to make people association To the dawn of the "meta universe". Choose not to dwell on the past, but will Meta, the new vest, really enable Zuckerberg to seize the future generation?
Facebook is no longer young
It is reported that earlier this year, a Facebook researcher shared some shocking statistics with his colleagues. According to these data, the world's largest social network is facing a survival crisis: its user group is aging.
Since 2019, the number of 13-19 year olds in Facebook America has declined by 13%, and it is expected that this number will decline by 45% in the next two years. This means that for the company's lucrative advertising market, the daily living number will decline qualitatively. In the next two years, the number of young users aged 20-30 is also expected to decline by 4%.
To make matters worse, the data shows that the younger the users, the less they use Facebook on average. All kinds of signs indicate that Facebook is rapidly losing its appeal to the younger generation.
Fortune magazine has also published an article saying that Facebook's image in people's minds is no longer what it used to be. Many people believe that it is old, and even Instagram's filters cannot make it young again.
The researchers wrote in an internal memo: "The aging of users is a real problem." They predicted that if "teenagers use Facebook less with age", the decline in the number of young Facebook users will become more serious than expected.
The above research results are consistent with the trends revealed in other Facebook internal documents, as well as the results of external surveys of current/former Facebook employees. In addition, although Facebook's Instagram is still very popular among teenagers, the company's data shows that the use of Instagram by teenagers is also decreasing.
At present, Facebook has regarded the aging user group as the long-term survival threat of the company and is trying to take countermeasures. However, there is no indication that the strategy taken by Facebook has worked. If this trend cannot be quickly reversed, this 17 year old social media network may lose an entire generation for the first time.
The internal documents mentioned above are part of the information disclosed by Facebook to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and provided to Congress in the edited form by the legal counsel of Francis Haugen. Hogan, once an employee of Facebook, has become a famous "whistleblower" who exposes Facebook's insider problems.
Facebook's efforts to attract users under 30 can be traced back to 2012. However, according to the above internal documents, the loss of young Facebook users has recently become more serious, and the risk is already high.
Facebook was originally a well-known social networking site for college students. Although the current daily life is nearly 2 billion, employees predict that the aging problem of users will further worsen, until Facebook is cut off from the younger generation, and the company's future growth will hit the ceiling.
Because of this, Facebook is committed to arousing the interest of young people and even young users. For this strategy, the company even set up a special youth team. In 2017, the company also launched Messenger for Children, an instant messaging application. Facebook also plans to launch Instagram for children, but it has been suspended due to recent accusations from lawmakers.
At the same time, some other social network platforms that were established later are increasingly popular with young people, which has attracted close attention and research from Facebook. Among them, Snap Chat is the preferred way for young people to communicate.
In response to the media's question about the loss of young users, Facebook spokesman Joe Osborne said: "Our products are still widely used by young people, but we are facing fierce competition from Snapchat and other companies. All social media companies want young people to use their services. We are no exception."
The number of users is getting worse
In March this year, Facebook data scientists submitted a report to Chris Cox, the company's chief product officer. The report shows Facebook's "health card" and the use of Instagram among teenagers. Although Instagram is still very popular among young people, it is losing the participation of young people in key markets such as the United States, Australia and Japan, and the average age of Facebook's user group is also rising rapidly.
The report shows that "most young people think Facebook is an application for middle-aged people, and that its content is boring, misleading and negative." According to the report, young people's impression of Facebook is generally negative, involving invasion of user privacy and low awareness of related services.
The report also shows that the growth rate of Facebook among American teenagers is very low, and this number continues to decline. In the top five countries where Facebook is used, the number of accounts registered by users under the age of 18 decreased by 26% compared with the previous year. For those registered young users, their participation is generally lower than that of older user groups, and this trend is worsening. The number of messages sent by young users decreased by 16% compared with the previous year, while the number of messages sent by 20-30 year old users was the same as that of the previous year.
Young Americans spend less time on Facebook applications than they did before the outbreak of COVID-19 last year, which is more worrying for the company. When the epidemic broke out, the utilization rate of Facebook services had soared across the board.
The report also suggests that the difference in participation between young users and middle-aged and young users should be narrowed.
Data shows that people over 30 in the United States spend an average of 24 minutes more time on Facebook every day than young users. In addition, the average age of Facebook users continues to decline, which is much faster than the growth rate of the average age of the population. There is no doubt that if this situation continues, Facebook will lose the younger generation.
Instagram has done better in retaining young people. It has reached full saturation in the United States, France, Britain, Japan, Australia and other developed countries. But it is not without hidden worries. The researchers pointed out that compared with 2020, the number of posts posted by teenagers decreased by 13%.
Young user promotion sprint plan
In order to solve the loss crisis of young users, Facebook and Instagram have been trying to launch products tailored for teenagers and young people in the past year. However, they also gradually realized that it would be a tough battle.
According to a Facebook strategy document on young users last November, young people generally believe that Facebook should not become a place full of rants and accusations. Negative media reports and other external factors further deepen this view of young people.
Facebook temporarily shelved some projects in November last year, focusing more resources and time on rebuilding credibility and gaining user trust, so as to expand its business in other areas of mental health products in the future. They have formulated a long-term plan, "to enable young people to obtain the guidance of professional mentors, carry out meaningful dialogue around the cause, so as to take action together with people in the same region."
According to this plan, Facebook will ask young people to update their friend networks to make them more relevant, because young people's relationship networks on Facebook "are often dormant, although they may have hundreds of friends in their circle of friends, it is difficult to realize any value from them." Facebook also plans to adjust the News Feed algorithm specifically for young people, It is planned to test the adjusted algorithm in the second half of this year, so as to push some useful content to users who have not followed the account.
Facebook also discussed whether young people can set different profiles according to different groups. Other plans also include a more intuitive information delivery product called "Spotlight", as well as the so-called "mood feeds" function, all aimed at increasing "visits and participation".
As part of the promotion of young users, the company has been developing a Facebook group product called Groups+, which has not yet been released, but will start testing as soon as this year. The product aims to enable people to join groups with specific personalities and "closely connected communities", so as to "enhance cultural relevance".
For users aged 20-30, Facebook also plans to develop a set of products and compete with LinkedIn. These products will facilitate people to browse, find jobs/career guidance, and deliver resumes.
7% of teenagers have been bullied on Instagram
Instagram's product development for young people has recently focused on reducing negative experiences such as social comparison and bullying. A report earlier this year said that 7% of teenagers had experienced bullying on Instagram, and 40% of bullying occurred in private information exchange. There are also media reports that some teenagers will experience negative social comparison when using Instagram, and some people will also suffer from depression.
It is reported that Instagram will launch the "Nudging" function for teenagers. The original design is that if teenagers browse harmful content for too long, they will "nudge" users, warn them that the content is harmful, and encourage users to pause and take a rest.
Finsta, short for Fake Instagram, is opposite to Rinsta (Real Instagram). Finsta refers to private accounts, which are mainly popular among young people. Fans are usually very close friends. According to the report, 61% of newly registered youth accounts in Instagram will set their personal data as "private" when initially set. Instagram wants to fine tune the "nudging" function to encourage more young users to set their accounts as private accounts. In addition, the research also shows that the popularity of the "finsta" private account is also growing explosively, especially among young users of Instagram - Instagram encourages the use of this account, hoping to retain young people.
Instagram researchers believe that: "Teenagers attach importance to social interaction with friends. Most of the time, they are private and do not want to follow we r) Publicity. They just want to share these connections with people they trust, so that they can get a feeling of being seen, accepted and recognized. "
Attracting young people and increasing their participation remains the primary goal of Instagram. Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, told employees in May this year that the company's goal is to "become a place where young people can define themselves and their future".
An uncertain future
The loss of young Facebook users was not as serious as this before. However, in the era of mobile phone self portraits, filters and camera rolls, social networking of pictures and videos is in full swing, but Facebook is still dominated by text content, so it is no wonder that young people continue to "run away".
Facebook can learn from Snapchat's successful experience - making users "invisible", thus reducing the pressure on them to share life clips every day - which helps young users stay on Instagram.
Instagram has taken a similar measure - encouraging users to use multiple accounts at the same time. But young people's use of Facebook has been declining.
In 2017, Michael Sayman, a talented young engineer trained by Facebook, started his internship on Facebook at the age of 17 and became a full member at the age of 18, and moved to Google. Only then did Facebook really understand the situation, which is related to whether it can attract a whole generation of people.
Nowadays, more and more teenagers are flocking to more immersive social game platforms, such as Fortnite or Roblox 。 These virtual 3D game worlds provide customized avatars, which attract young people who want to be online but don't want others to comment. In contrast, traditional social media is like a show for others to watch, while the virtual game world can bring more fun for young people to "surf in waistcoat".
Facebook is not sure whether the plan to win back young people is perfect enough. The report in March this year was blunt: "Considering the current competitive environment, it is too early to evaluate the effectiveness of our series of measures aimed at recalling young users."
At present, Facebook has said that it is focusing on "serving young people" again. CEO Zuckerberg said that he has repositioned the company's team, and "serving the young" will become the Polaris indicating the company's direction of action. He said that the change was not just a verbal statement. "This is the right path."
Zuckerberg predicted that it would take several years to realize the change of the company's strategy. One of the changes that may soon be seen will come from Instagram. He said that Instagram will have a "significant change", which will further tilt to video elements, and make Reels short video function "a more core part of user experience".
