With the primary week of Meta’s antitrust trial behind us, paperwork shared by the U.S Federal Commerce Fee (FTC) supplied extra perception into Meta’s inner struggles to maintain Fb related. In emails from 2022, Meta executives mulled totally different visions for Fb’s future to spice up its success, acknowledging that its cultural relevance was reducing.
Quick-forward to 2025, and Meta continues to be grappling with this subject. Mark Zuckerberg mentioned in the course of the firm’s This fall earnings name in January that the corporate needs to revive Fb’s cultural relevance this yr with a return to “OG Fb.” A part of its resolution for this drawback is the latest launch of a revamped Associates tab.
In a sequence of messages from April 2022, which have been shared as proof in the course of the trial, Zuckerberg mentioned considerations about Fb’s “Associates” construction and format being outdated as each different main platform targeted on “Following.”
He thought of ditching the Associates format and even recommended deleting everybody’s Fb mates and having them begin once more.
Among the highlights from Mark Zuckerberg’s emails are under.
Issues round Fb dropping cultural relevance
- “I wish to make certain we now have a novel imaginative and prescient for the FB app that may result in sustainable development over time. Although the FB app’s engagement is regular in lots of locations, it seems like its cultural relevance is reducing shortly and I fear that this can be a number one indicator of future well being points. Even when IG and WA do properly, I don’t see a path for our firm to achieve the best way we want if FB falters, so we have to get this proper.”
- “My concept is that we have to refresh the graph construction of FB to ensure that it to achieve cultural relevance and a greater long run path.”
- “I feel we have to discover a technique that doesn’t go away one service selecting up the scraps the opposite service leaves behind or having both service artificially or unreasonably constrain itself. Proper now IG is doing properly on cultural relevance and FB isn’t, so I’m extra targeted on determining an inexpensive path for FB long run.”
Worrying that Fb’s “friending” construction is outdated
- “The FB app owns the idea of friending, so if there have been a option to freshen this up and make it a extra related a part of life within the 2020s then this could possibly be path.”
- “Friending feels out of vogue proper now for at the very least a couple of causes. First, lots of people’s good friend graphs are stale and never crammed with the individuals they wish to hear from or join with. Second, it feels heavyweight to request somebody new as a good friend, which makes it laborious to rectify the primary subject. More often than not after I meet somebody or change into concerned with somebody I simply wish to observe them first however not ask something of them. Third, and associated, since FB doesn’t really feel as culturally related, that provides additional weight to including some on FB vs different companies.”
- “It feels to me just like the FB app’s place in cultural relevance is deeply tied to the good friend graph construction versus different organizing ideas — for instance, IG/Twitter-style observe graphs, TikTok-style pure algorithmic strategy, Teams/Reddit-style communities, and so forth.”
Proposed options
- “Each different trendy social community is constructed on following somewhat than friending, so its appears attainable that the FB app is simply outdated as a result of it by no means adopted this elementary innovation. The way in which to rectify this is able to be to completely undertake following. If we wished to do that, I don’t assume that merely supporting following for public accounts can be enough. I feel we’d have to modify from friending to following on non-public accounts as properly (despite the fact that this is able to work equally for these accounts) and we’d most likely wish to eliminate the idea of liking pages as properly.”
- “One doubtlessly loopy thought is to contemplate wiping everybody’s graphs and having them begin once more. This clearly carries the danger that if we did that then lots of people simply wouldn’t rebuild their graphs or would change into much less engaged, so if we wished to contemplate this we’d should construct out an experiment and take a look at it in a smaller nation to ensure it led to a optimistic outcome. I feel we’d must do one thing comparatively excessive like this to maneuver the needle although and I don’t assume small issues like spring cleansing flows would transfer the needle.”