Facebook may still have billions of users today, but do you remember when using the platform was actually fun? Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg does, and he said in a quarterly earnings call on Wednesday that bringing back “OG Facebook” is a big priority for the company this year — reports 9to5Mac.
“Facebook is used by more than 3 billion monthly actives and we’re focused on growing its cultural influence. I’m excited this year to get back to some OG Facebook,” Zuckerberg said during the call.
Meta is home to Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Threads — platforms that make up much of today’s social media landscape and bring in billions of monthly users. While Facebook played a major role in shaping social media as we know it today, it has dropped off significantly in recent years. Zuckerberg wants to bring back some of the magic that made Facebook so great at its peak.
While he didn’t get into specifics, he expanded a bit on Meta’s plans for Facebook later in the call. Here’s an excerpt from Meta’s official transcript:
I think that there are a lot of opportunities to make it way more culturally influential than it is today. And I think that that’s sort of a fun and interesting goal that will take our product development in some interesting directions that we maybe haven’t had a focus on it as much over the last several years.
So I don’t know that I have anything much more specific on this other than that this is going to be one of my focus areas for this year. I mean I think it’s an investment area and something I’m going to spend some time on.
[…]
But overall, I’m really excited about doing some exciting stuff here…as we start rolling stuff out…I think some of this will kind of get back to how Facebook was originally used back in the day. So I think it will be fun.
Meta’s latest focus has been pushing Meta AI on all of its platforms — Facebook included — and improving cross-platform functionality. Moving forward, the Zuck wants Meta to also work on bringing back Facebook’s glory days — even if that means scaling back on the platform’s profitability in the short term.
“It might mean that in the near term, we make some trade-offs to kind of focus on some product areas of what we’re doing ahead of just kind of maximizing business results in the near term on it,” Zuckerberg said.
During the call, Zuckerberg also outlined Meta’s plans for Instagram, Threads, and of course, the fabled metaverse.
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The little Zuck must know that ship has already sailed, while his caving to and connection with the Felon-in-Chief has some users looking to alternatives – some with fewer 'features'. Much as they've done with Musk's X and it's side-projects.