Why is Facebook losing its relevance? ‘Worried’ boss Mark Zuckerberg explains

Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg has been worried about Facebook’s cultural relevance for years, as shown by emails between him and Facebook head Tom Alison from April 2022.

These emails were presented in court this week during the FTC’s antitrust trial against Meta and their main topic was on how to keep Facebook relevant, Business Insider reported.

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“Even though the FB app’s engagement is steady in many places, it feels like its cultural relevance is decreasing quickly and I worry that this may be a leading indicator of future health issues,” the report quoted Zuckerberg as having written.

The matter was such a concern that even if Instagram and WhatsApp did well, Zuckerberg wrote he couldn’t see a path to success for Meta if Facebook faltered.

Zuckerberg pointed out that Facebook’s “friending” act seems to have lost its luster. “First, a lot of people’s friend graphs are stale and not filled with the people they want to hear from or connect with,” he had written.

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He himself admitted that he was more likely to follow influencers on Instagram or Twitter, adding that Facebook may be losing its relevancy due to “friending” as opposed to other platforms’ “following” feature.

He further presented Alison three options to help Facebook’s relevancy. One of them were a “crazy idea” of wiping people’s friend graphs and having them start from scratch.

Facebook’s attempt to focus on communities with groups apparently also still needed work. “I’m optimistic about community messaging, but after running at groups in FB for several years, I’m not sure how much further we’ll be able to push this,” he had written.

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These emails came just months after Facebook widely rolled out Reels, its short-form video product resembling TikTok.