Facebook aging is the ghost that haunts social networks

When Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook in February 2004, he was 20 years old. Today, at almost 38, its age group, from 35 to 44, accounts for 18% of the likes on the social network, according to the Digital 2022 Global Overview Report study, by the British digital marketing agency We Are Social.

If Zuckerberg were 20 years old again today, he would likely be on TikTok, the social media that has 43% of its worldwide audience concentrated in the 18-24 age group. This goes far beyond the users that Facebook has in the same age group: 22.6%.

Snapchat (39%) and Instagram (30%) also far outpace Facebook when it comes to attracting teens and young adults, who interact the most on social media.

Hence the question: is Facebook getting old? According to experts heard by the report, what the largest social network in the world faces today is a mix of distrust about the manipulation of its personal data and strong competition with platforms that achieve the engagement of the young audience, either because they are more in tune with trends. , or the speed with which they introduce innovations.

The Facebook group –which since October has been renamed Meta– has become a global corporation, with 70,000 employees, gathering 2.9 billion users, equivalent to 37% of the global population, which can make it a little slow. to detect and implement novelties.

In the last quarter of 2021, for the first time in history, it lost active daily users, those who log into the network every day: there were 500 thousand fewer, mainly in the regions of Africa, Latin America and India, falling to 1.9 billion . The announcement, made on the 2nd, gave the company a 26% drop in the value of its shares.

The data showed a reality that had been taking shape at least since 2013, when David Ebersman, then Facebook’s chief financial officer, said that the company’s daily users had declined “specifically among younger teenagers.”

The comment had a negative impact on the company’s stock, prompting Sheryl Sandberg, the group’s chief operating officer, to criticize the comment as “disproportionate”.

However, documents leaked by a former employee of the company show that the group has been betting on Instagram to attract and retain younger users, admitting the aging of Facebook.

According to The New York Times, since 2018, almost the entire annual global marketing budget (some $390 million) has been aimed at attracting teenagers. The priority, according to the newspaper, is the “initial high school” category, which covers young people aged between 13 and 15.

The release of those documents put the company under enormous pressure, and in October of last year, Zuckerberg said in a conversation with analysts that the company will prioritize younger users over older ones. At the time, the executive said that this required a reform, and highlighted that it would last for years.

“There is a feeling that the network is aging, with the migration of younger users to other platforms”, says Fernanda Vicentini, professor of social network strategy at ESPM (Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing).

“For a social network to maintain itself, it needs innovation and development. Facebook has always been very aggressive in relation to the acquisition of emerging competitors”, says Fernanda, remembering that the company bought Instagram in 2012 for US$ 1 billion and, in 2014, WhatsApp, for $19 billion.

“But then they started bumping into people who didn’t want to be bought, like LinkedIn and, especially, TikTok, which is the network of the moment among young people”, he says.

Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg’s network was collecting scandals, which undermined user confidence.

First it was Cambridge Analytica, in 2018: the consultancy was the subject of investigations into the data leak of 87 million Facebook users and their use to target political ads and influence elections.

Among the polls suspected of interference is the 2016 US presidential election, which elected Donald Trump. Users who responded to a survey by the consultancy, which worked for Trump, were bombarded with political messages.

In October of last year, a series of reports appeared in the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal about the modus operandi of Facebook, based on the account of a former executive of the company, Frances Haugen.

The former employee accused the company, based on documents, of what she called “moral bankruptcy”: Facebook works with algorithms that encourage discord; its tools are designed to create dependency and increase consumption; the company does little to control organized crime.

“I believe that Facebook’s products harm children, deepen division and weaken our democracy,” he said.

wanted by sheet, Meta declined to comment. After all the scandals and loss of prestige, Mark Zuckerberg is ready to delve into the Metaverse, an online world populated by avatars, powered by virtual and augmented reality.​

In the opinion of Issaaf Karhawi, PhD in Communication Sciences from USP (University of São Paulo), the fact that Facebook’s name is at the center of campaigns that spread fake news is an important part of the loss of new users on the network. But it is not the only justification.

“Facebook’s architecture was getting outdated, when compared to the design of newer networks”, says Issaaf, author of the book “From blogger to influencer” (publisher Sulina). “Facebook is not an immersive media, like Instagram and TikTok, which have a scroll [rolagem] infinite and holds the user much more”, he says.

According to her, Facebook’s last big innovation was in 2008, when the network introduced the ‘check-in’ functionality, which generated a flurry of posts from users marking where they were – cinema, restaurant, beach, etc.

To continue in the race, it takes a lot of investment and connection with trends, he says.

“Instagram gained popularity by introducing filters and making everyone able to achieve impeccable aesthetics. TikTok went against this and brought the user the challenge of being authentic: there’s no photo, it’s just video, and you need to capture people’s attention is entertainment”, says Issaaf.

Ana Paula Passarelli, director of operations at the Brunch agency, which works with digital influencers, says that the older audience is no longer demanding new things and feels comfortable browsing a certain network.

“But the younger ones don’t, they want to explore resources, be surprised, no network will convince them if they stay comfortable”, says she, a specialist in communication and semiotics.

“We will no longer have a new ‘playground owner’ and that is very good, I believe in the multiplication of communication channels, to face the big techs”.

Along these lines, platforms that were previously restricted to user groups are gaining more followers, such as Discord (which competes with WhatsApp) and Kwai (which rivals TikTok).

Facebook’s economic might, however, remains undeniable. Meta (which includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) earned US$ 117.9 billion last year, up 37% over 2020. But advertisers are not indifferent to the perrengues.

“Facebook is still the main form of sponsorship via social media, but it’s getting old,” says Rafael Beraldi, director of marketing and new business at Camelo Digital. “Those under 40 use Facebook very little,” he says.

Instagram is also no longer new. “The most active influencers are migrating from Instagram to TikTok,” she says. The network controlled by Chinese ByteDance, by the way, is a challenge for the companies’ marketing, says Beraldi.

“TikTok reflects the sense of humor of Gen Z, who are very direct, authentic, and for whom money is not what matters most,” says the executive, referring to those born between 1995 and 2010.

“It is necessary to find a way to make the brands dialogue with this public”, he says. Of the resources invested in social networks today by Camelo customers, 70% go to Instagram, 20% to Facebook and 10% to TikTok.

In the opinion of Alexandra Avelar, director in Brazil at the American company Emplifi, a platform that manages the customer experience on social networks, at some point, Facebook will no longer be relevant.

“The fact that we don’t see a renewal in the audience is already a warning sign”, says the executive, who serves large companies such as McDonald’s, Delta Airlines and Ford.

Survey of Emplifi for the sheet shows the number of interactions with the brand (likes, shares, comments) per thousand views. In December 2019, Facebook in Brazil accounted for 19.5 interactions per thousand views. In December 2020, it dropped to 11, and last December to 7.

In comparison, Instagram had, in December 2021, 130 interactions per thousand views. Despite the commercial reach of Instagram being more than 18 times greater than that of Facebook, the preferred social network of Brazilian influencers has seen better days: there were 206 interactions in December 2020 and 224 in December 2019.

“At first during the pandemic, there was an increase in interactions on all networks, then there was a drop, possibly due to the saturation of use”, says Alexandra. “But the retreat was more accentuated on Facebook, users were migrating to other networks. There are people who have never been through Facebook, have already gone straight to Instagram or TikTok. Seeing people posting the dances piques curiosity”, she says.

For the executive, Facebook is fully aware of this aging and tries to get the best possible result within its user base, which does not require much innovation. “They test more news on Instagram,” she says.

Apparently, like us, social networks age and die, as was the case with Orkut, deactivated by Google in 2014.