Meta (META) wants to draw in more Gen Z users by revamping its Facebook app for people outside your strange Uncle Greg. Tom Alison, the CEO of Facebook, is promoting the social network as a platform for young adults, ages 18 to 29, to interact, purchase, and stay up to date on trends.
During a creator-centric event on Friday in New York City, Alison stated, “We have to build for the next generation of social media consumers… Gen Z, in order to stay relevant.” “Our product roadmap is driven by the needs of young adults.”
Teens aren’t as enamored with Meta’s sister app, Instagram, as they are with the 20-year-old social network that helped transform Meta into a software giant. In contrast to 80% of kids who use Instagram and 72% of teens who use TikTok, just 32% of teens use Facebook monthly, according to Piper Sandler’s most recent Taking Stock with kids poll.
However, Facebook is a good fit for people in their late teens and early 20s who are adjusting to a variety of life changes, according to Alison.
“We discovered, for instance, that people are already using [Facebook] Marketplace when they move into their first apartment after conducting extensive study. After that, they frequently join a group at their new college to make new friends, according to Alison.
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And we came to the realization that a lot of this kind of activity is already taking place on Facebook. All we have to do is pull it all together pretty well.
Enticing creators to join the platform through the enhancement of its search function and short-form video platform, Reels, has been a part of that process.
Thus far, the plan appears to be effective. Alison claims that among young adults, Facebook has been rising in the US for a number of quarters and year over year. Additionally, 60% of Facebook users’ time is spent watching videos.
Facebook saw a rare dip in user numbers in Q2 2022, falling from 2.936 billion monthly active users to 2.934 billion, which raised concerns about the platform’s potential demise. But since then, from Q3 2022 through Q4 2023, the social network has expanded every quarter. In its most recent quarterly report, the corporation omitted information about monthly active Facebook users.
According to Alison, his team’s original concern was that the platform’s improvements may alienate the elderly users that the social network has come to be identified with.
But the majority of the population, along with the millennials who joined the social network at its inception in 2014, have embraced the feature enhancements.