Facebook’s ad money is what keeps Meta afloat even as its popularity is declining.
Twenty years have passed since Mark Zuckerberg initiated the process of bringing the website Facebook.com online from his college dorm room. The subsequent events have been extensively documented: the social network that was exclusive to Harvard University ultimately spread to other college campuses and finally the entire world.
Within Meta’s “family” of applications, the social network is occupying a position that is becoming increasingly problematic. The majority of persons in the United States continue to use the service; yet, three out of every four say that Facebook is “making society worse.” This may be due to the fact that it has contributed to a global crisis of misinformation and has fostered hate speech that promotes genocidal ideas. Despite the fact that Facebook continues to bring in billions of dollars in advertising income for Meta, the rise in the number of users has slowed to the point where the business has officially stated that it will no longer disclose the sheer number of individuals who use it.
In Facebook’s list of posts that have received the most views, “Amen spam” is frequently found. Individuals that engage in spamming are the most active users on its game-streaming service. Meta reorganised its feed once more in response to the growing pressure from TikTok, with the intention of placing more emphasis on suggestions than on postings from people you already know. However, the change has not made Facebook feel very much like TikTok; rather, it has provided a peculiar glimpse into what Meta’s algorithms consider to be the most entertaining and least offending content.
My personal Facebook feed is flooded with posts from organisations that I do not belong to that are dedicated to mundane subjects such as house remodelling, cast iron pan aficionados, and a group that goes by the name “Dull Men’s Club.” It has been more than a year since I last posted anything to my personal profile, despite the fact that I log in practically every day. I’m not exactly an outlier in this regard. When it comes to the content that individuals share on social media, the vast majority of adults today report that they are “pickier” than they were in the past.
It should come as no surprise that adolescents rarely show any interest in the social network that their parents and grandparents maintain. Compared to 71 percent in 2015, only 33 percent of adolescents in the United States can say that they have “ever” used the programme. Due to these dynamics, in which Facebook’s user base is ageing at a quicker rate than its product, a number of researchers have come to the conclusion that the social network will eventually have more profiles for deceased individuals than profiles for living individuals.
Facebook continues to be the workhorse of the Mark Zuckerberg movie universe, despite the fact that it is no longer the title character on the platform. Today, Facebook has more than three billion users. Instead, it is merely one of the “family” of applications that his company offers. In the year 2021, when Zuckerberg relaunched the corporation as Meta, it was formally demoted to a lower position. “Our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can’t possibly represent everything that we’re doing today, let alone in the future,” Zuckerberg stated in reference to Facebook. “From now on, we’re going to be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first.”
In the best case scenario, it is debatable whether or not Meta has been successful in becoming a “metaverse-first” corporation. However, there are very few people who would claim that it is even somewhat “Facebook-first.” More recently, Zuckerberg has attempted to market Meta as both an artificial intelligence firm and a metaverse corporation, thereby entering the competition to develop superintelligence on par with that of humans.
Nevertheless, the success of Facebook is the only reason why Zuckerberg’s objectives are even a possibility in the first place. Meta’s investments in the metaverse have resulted in losses totaling tens of billions of dollars, and the company anticipates that these losses will continue for the foreseeable future. As artificial general intelligence (AGI) is not inexpensive, the corporation also intends to spend billions more on AI infrastructure.
It is via these investments that Zuckerberg will assess whether or not his prediction on the future of social media is accurate. In addition, if he is successful in bringing his vision of an AI chatbot and metaverse-enabled future to fruition, it will have been made possible in large part due to the incredible financial success of the most dated and uninteresting aspect of his establishment.