Mark Zuckerberg is planning some big changes for Facebook in a bid to make using the platform feel like it did “back in the day.” During the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, Zuck said that Facebook is an important part of its more than three billion monthly users’ lives and that he’s working on making it “way more culturally influential than it is today.”
He didn’t divulge any specific changes, only that he’s “excited this year to get back to some OG Facebook,” and that the overhaul will be a significant focus for the company over the next 12 months. Zuckerberg also suggested that Meta may have to sacrifice its short-term business results in order to focus on product changes needed to improve Facebook.
“I think that’s sort of a fun and interesting goal that will take our product development in some interesting directions that we maybe haven’t focused as much on in the last several years,” Zuckerberg said during the earnings call Q&A. “I think it’s an investment area and something I’m going to spend some time on.”
Recapturing the OG Facebook vibe could mean several things. Many people like myself will think back to the era before it was overtaken by our boomer and Gen X relatives — online spaces are less fun with your family spectating. But let’s not forget that the original Facebook, known as Facemash, was a site Zuckerberg created to nonconsensually rank his female classmates at Harvard by attractiveness. I sure hope this isn’t the “masculine energy” he thinks we need more of, given he reportedly blamed former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg for making inclusivity changes at the company.
Zuckerberg’s comments about old-school Facebook don’t necessarily mean he actually wants to strip modern features out of it. He celebrated that the time users spent watching videos on Facebook was up by “double-digit rates year-over-year” earlier in the earnings call, and said he expects Reels on Instagram and Facebook to keep growing “regardless” of what happens with TikTok.
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