Facebook is the place where the world is — that’s what the common man in 2018 thinks about the social media platform, which is mostly true. People are spending more time on Facebook and other social media platforms instead of doing some fruitful activity in the real world. While this meant good news for Facebook’s business intentions, Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was unhappy about it and has since then worked on making Facebook more ‘meaningful’. And, they already have achieved results.
In a recent Facebook post, Zuckerberg reached out to his followers and was happy to quote that their changes to Facebook’s algorithms in the fourth quarter of 2017 bore fruits for the company. They axed down viral videos and other similar trending stuff in the four-month period. The result was that all of Facebook’s members spent collectively 50 million lesser than what was spent in the third quarter of 2017. Even North America showed a considerable decline in the number of active users.
The statistics portray a bad news for the company’s business, but Zuckerberg is pretty happy about it. “By focusing on meaningful interactions, I expect the time we all spend on Facebook will be more valuable,” wrote Zuckerberg. Through the post, he makes it clear that Facebook will push for connecting more people in a more productive way instead of attracting them to stay for longer periods of time on the platform going through “passive content”. He also lays stress on the fact that videos are the next big thing for Facebook’s growth as a platform and they will be used in ways that help people connect with their friends through new experiences.
Zuckerberg also said that Facebook’s is giving efforts to curb fake news, hate messages and other forms of abuse on the platform through the use of AI and a dedicated team of around 14,000 people working around the world to filter such unwanted content. Facebook is also hopeful of the ‘Stories’ feature to grow, as it feels that “Stories is a better format for sharing multiple quick video clips throughout your day.”
