What Happened to Facebook?
Back in the days, Facebook was huge on the market and managed to be the very first social media platform with billions of users worldwide. When they purchased Instagram, they became even bigger and seemed unstoppable. What about now? You may have noticed that we don’t hear much about Meta/Facebook anymore, besides Zuckerberg obsessing over his Metaverse and Instagram slowly turning into some kind of TikTok 2.0. Let’s see what caused such a decline.
Not Enough Humans?
When Facebook first started and conquered the whole Internet, one of their goals was to gain as many users as possible. Now that we are in 2022, there’s nobody else to reach out for anymore. This whole situation might explain why Zuckerberg is obsessively trying to bring Internet absolutely everywhere in the world: it’s not about “connecting people together” but rather the idea of gathering the remaining humans available on his side. Of course, we have to take out kids younger than 13 years old of the equation since they are too young for the platform.
Another factor is the drop in daily users: people spend less and less time on Facebook and let’s not forget the huge amount of abandoned accounts of people that unfortunately passed away. Unless the family members intervene, these “ghost” accounts stay indefinitely up.
Changing Demographic
This might be the biggest game changer in this whole story: while Facebook attracted tons of users, ranging from teenagers to adults and even the elderly for years, it is no longer the case. The common joke saying that Facebook is for old people became a reality.
But where is everyone gone? Look no further, they are all on TikTok. Twitter and Snapchat are still a thing but TikTok is definitely crushing its competitors by providing endless content. Of course, Instagram is still popular… However, since it is slowly turning into a pale copy of TikTok, most people agree that the app is loosing what made its success back in 2010: sharing stories and posting pictures.
One of the reasons why Facebook might not be as appealing resides in its interface. While other platforms mainly focus on the video format or on pictures, Facebook is a melting pot of pretty much everything: posts, pictures, videos, marketplace and even dating.
What’s next?
Since this decline, it is worth reflecting on what the future of social media is going to look like: is Facebook going to disappear for good? What should we expect from the Metaverse? Should we expect brand new platforms that are going to steal the show? Let’s see what the future holds!
