Facebook Losing Relevance? ‘Worried’ Zuckerberg Breaks Silence

Emails from April 2022 between Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook chief Tom Alison reveal that Zuckerberg has been concerned about Facebook’s cultural relevance for years. 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.

According to the report, Mark Zuckerberg expressed concern that while Facebook app engagement remained stable in many regions, its cultural relevance appeared to be fading rapidly—a trend he feared could signal deeper problems ahead.

The issue troubled him to the extent that, despite Instagram and WhatsApp performing well, he believed Meta’s overall success would be in jeopardy if Facebook declined.

Zuckerberg also noted that Facebook’s traditional “friending” model had lost its appeal. He observed that many users’ friend networks had become outdated and no longer included the people they truly wanted to engage with.

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Zuckerberg admitted that he was 

Zuckerberg admitted he personally preferred following influencers on platforms like Instagram and Twitter, suggesting that Facebook’s reliance on the “friending” model might be contributing to its declining relevance compared to the “following” systems of other apps. To address this, he proposed three potential solutions to Tom Alison—one of which was a bold idea to reset users’ friend networks entirely and let them rebuild 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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