It’s common to hear Millennials and members of Generation X remark “I’m old enough to remember when Facebook was cool.”
Indeed, members of both groups are old enough to remember when Facebook held the title of being the trendy social network that young people wanted to be on. Long before it became Meta Platforms (META) , Facebook attracted a wide range of users.
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Years later, the platform is mostly utilized by the parents and grandparents of the former teenagers who helped make Facebook successful. While other platforms have innovated and attracted young users, Facebook has done little to entice the age groups that create viral content to use it.
Now the company is taking a major step torward changing that. But many questions abound as to if it can ever be cool again.
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Facebook wants to address a content problem, but that may not be its only one
After months of watching its relevance slowly slip away, Facebook is taking steps to usher in a new era. Earlier this year, Meta announced that it would be offering a new “breakthrough bonus” of as much as $5,000 to popular influencers who were willing to move their content to Facebook and Instagram.
eMarketer principal analyst Jasmine Enberg noted that even with large financial incentives, Meta is facing a difficult road ahead. After all, Facebook hasn’t been considered a “cool” platform in many years. But as she added, the platform must grow, and attracting young users is likely its only way forward.
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As she adds, Meta needs Facebook to continue fueling its ad business, which helps support its artificial intelligence (AI) and metaverse endeavors.
Enberg’s skepticism that Facebook can ever reclaim its former status as a social media leader seems to be widely shared. Entrepreneur and podcast host Joseph Gonzalez notes that while Meta may be able to attract some content creators in the short term, that doesn’t mean they will stay.
“Many influencers are currently using the same post for different platforms, and Facebook is no longer the best platform for organic reach. Unless Facebook fundamentally changes how content is discovered and interacted with, it will be very difficult for influencers to ignore TikTok and YouTube.”
Gonzalez adds that the content discovery mechanisms on both TikTok and YouTube are significantly more sophisticated than Facebook’s.
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Neal K. Shah, chairman of Counterforce Health, also believes Meta needs to make more fundamental changes to its overall platform before it can expect to see any real growth from new content creators.
“The “Breakthrough” bonus program comes off as reactive, not strategic,” he states. “Facebook must show it has a clear, sustainable business model for creators that goes beyond these initial incentives, or else it runs the risk of being the flavor of the month (and not much more).”
How Facebook can achieve the turnaround it needs
Overall, it seems that Facebook’s quest to lure influencers to its platform may not be the best course of action unless the company can better optimize it to suit its growth needs.
In focusing on trying to make Facebook “cool again,” Meta may be forgetting that it still owns Instagram, a platform better suited to compete with platforms like YouTube and TikTok on short-form video content.
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Kaveh Vahdat, founder and CEO of RiseAngle, believes that the company would be better served to allow Instagram to remain its platform for young influencers and address its Facebook problem differently.
“If Meta wants a real strategy, it should focus on letting Instagram be its ‘cool’ brand and reposition Facebook as a powerful monetization hub for mid-tier creators. The platform won’t win the culture war, but it could win the revenue war by offering superior payouts and tools for professional creators who care more about earnings than trends,” he says.
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