Link: Meta says the future of Facebook is young adults (again)

In an update from Tom Alison, who heads up the Facebook app for Meta, he says that the service is shifting to reflect an “increased focus on young adults” compared with other users. “Facebook is still for everyone, but in order to build for the next generation of social media consumers, we’ve made significant changes with young adults in mind,” he wrote. Notably, Alison’s note makes no mention of the “metaverse,” which Zuckerberg also once saw as a central part of the company’s future. Instead, he says that “leaning into new product capabilities enabled by AI” is a significant goal, along with luring younger users. That’s also not surprising, given that Meta and Zuckerberg have recently tried to rebrand some of the company’s metaverse ambitions as AI advancements. But it’s also not clear how successful Meta will be in its efforts to win over young adults. Though Alison says Facebook has seen “five quarters of healthy growth in young adult app usage in the US and Canada,” with 40 million young adult daily active users, that’s still a relatively small percentage of the 205 million daily US Facebook users the company reported in February, the last time it would break out user numbers for the app. #

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Yoooo, this is a quick note on a link that made me go, WTF? Find all past links here.