Facebook wants to become more attractive to young users

Under the competitive pressure of its Chinese rival Tiktok, Facebook wants to become more attractive to young users. All Facebook apps get the goal of becoming the best service for young adults between the ages of 18 and 29, "instead of optimizing them for a larger number of older people," said founder and boss Mark Zuckerberg. At the same time, Facebook is investing billions in building a virtual world in which Zuckerberg sees the next communication platform. The focus on young users will have consequences, said Zuckerberg in a conference call with analysts. In other age groups, there will probably be less growth as a result - but it is the right approach in the long term. At the same time, it will "take years, not months, to fully implement the change". The Facebook boss described the video service Tiktok as "one of the most efficient competitors we have ever faced". Specifically, the plans seem to mean, among other things, that on Facebook and the photo service Instagram, short videos - Tiktok's core business - will come to the fore. Most recently, 60 percent of video advertising revenue came from portrait clips that were less than 15 seconds long. Young adults have traditionally been a "strong base," said Zuckerberg. "And that's important because they are the future." In the past decade, however, the user base has become more diverse and Facebook has focused on being there for everyone. Now the needs of the younger generation should become the "guiding star". The latest internal Facebook documents that have become public include analyzes that show that Facebook is used less by young people in the USA. The current wave of critical media reports based on internal documents rejected Zuckerberg as a "coordinated attempt" to present Facebook in the wrong light. Among the allegations that go back to the former Facebook employee Frances Haugen, it is particularly serious that the company knew, thanks to surveys and data analysis, that its services cause damage in real life - but ignored this in order to earn money.