Mark Zuckerberg has gone on record saying that he’s redirecting teams within Facebook to focus more on young adults. The comment comes amidst the company’s concerns about declining usage among teens and young adults. 

Zuckerberg wants Facebook to be more than just lip service. Shifting this focus isn’t going to be a quick transition as the founder-CEO expects it to take years. The platform’s usage will also grow slower amongst older people than it would have otherwise because of the said shift in focus. 

“Historically, young adults have been a strong base and that’s important because they are the future. But over the last decade, as the audience that uses our apps has expanded so much and we’ve focused on serving everyone, our services have gotten dialled to be best for the most people who use them rather than specifically for young adults,” said Zuckerberg in a post on Facebook outlining what he said in an earnings call. 

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Stiff competetion finally?

Although the process of this shift in focus is long and slow, one of the immediate changes that we’ll be seeing is on Instagram as reels become a more central experience. This change comes in the wake of stiff competition from TikTok, which Mark himself describes as “one of the most effective competitors that we have ever faced.”

The details for what these changes are going to be are still pretty much up in the air and there’s no telling what Facebook will actually be doing, it’s clear that the company has been considering and planning this move for quite some time now. 

Zuckerberg also outlines plans to build a full-fledged e-commerce platform. Facebook already has Marketplace up and running with shops getting more developed.

He also mentioned an “exciting program” planned for the holiday season where the company will be working closely with a number of businesses they have invested in to figure out what works best to attract new customers and help grow their businesses faster. The company plans to scale those solutions “more broadly in 2022.”

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