Facebook celebrates its 20th anniversary: ​​Is the social media giant still relevant?

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Facebook is now two decades old. And Despite its decline in popularity among younger generations, it remains the largest social network in the world.

It now has over 3 billion active monthly users, or a third of the world’s population.

But the age of Facebook is starting and The platform has strayed somewhat from its original goal: to bring people together (for free) and help friends stay in touch..

If you browse Facebook today, you’ll find fewer posts from your real friends and significantly more sponsored ads, conspiracy articles, and posts from old acquaintances documenting every aspect of their lives with blurry photos.

As our profiles gather dust and Facebook celebrates its 20th anniversary, Is the first major social network still relevant in 2024?

global phenomenon

Facebook was not the first social network, far from it It was the first to spread across borders and generations like a virus, changing the way people interact with each other, organize social movements and consume information..

Along with Twitter, it has become a vehicle for social change, fueling movements such as the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and the 2023 attack on the Brazilian Congress.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg, who was just 19 when he created Facebook, has suddenly found himself at the center of a debate over the limits of free speech, amid criticism that Facebook is not doing enough to fight misinformation and hate speech.

Regulators in the United States and the European Union continue to question Mark Zuckerberg over the issue of misinformation spread on the site during the coronavirus pandemic. Under the new EU Digital Services Act, Meta is responsible for monitoring and removing misinformation and illegal content on its platform..

When it comes to Facebook’s mission, Mark Zuckerberg expanded the platform’s functionality to maintain a viable business model, prioritizing ad revenue and data collection over actual user interaction..

In 2019, Mark Zuckerberg changed the platform’s motto to “It is free and always will be“is”It’s quick and easy“, paving the way for Facebook’s new paid, ad-free subscription model. Two years later, he named Facebook’s parent company “Meta”, placing a major bet on Metaverse Research.

It increased video content on Facebook and Instagram (also a meta brand), added the Facebook Marketplace, where people can buy and sell items, and expanded messaging capabilities with the development of Messenger and the acquisition of WhatsApp.

The platform today bears very little resemblance to the Facebook of yesteryear, because It brings together the features of other popular social networking sites like Reddit, TikTok, Twitter and Snapchat..

Aging user base, increasingly global reach

While Facebook is the cornerstone of any social media marketing campaign, its user base is aging.

Millennials still prefer apps, although their numbers are declininge – A study conducted in 2022 found that 69% of them prefer to use Facebook over other social networks, while 75% of them did so in 2021.

Younger generations are also less attracted to Facebook: Only 37% of Gen Z say they are active on Facebook, while 65% use TikTok.

While these figures have prompted declarations that “Facebook is dead”, the latest user figures from early February suggest quite the opposite.

Every day, 2.11 billion people connect to Facebook, a 6% increase in one year. Also Three-quarters of these daily users are outside the United States, Canada and Europe.

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So while Facebook is losing users in Europe and seeing its growth slow in the United States and Canada, it is gaining millions of users worldwide. The largest market for Facebook is India, with 315 million users.

The way people use Facebook is also changing, adapting to the platform’s new algorithm that focuses more on viral content than connections between users.

“Over the past two years, we’ve seen a shift: people are coming to Facebook more to be entertained, to discover something new, or to see what’s going on in the world.“, writes Facebook director Tom Ellison, a Press release published last MarchIn which it announced a new AI-powered content discovery feature.

“Previously, you might have been invited to a group (Facebook) by a friend, or searched for a group based on a specific need or interest.“, explains Tom Ellison.”Using AI to identify posts in public groups based on your interests, We can now show you more relevant content in your news feed, without you having to do research or rely on word of mouth to find a group.“

It seems that Tom Ellison’s vision for the future of Facebook is not friendly. At least, not with humans.

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for the moment, Facebook’s future seems to be driven by algorithms that will show you more of what you want to see. It’s a good strategy to encourage people to stay on the platform, but it’s also a step closer to dividing users into echo chambers independent of each other.