Meta has been saying for the past few years that “young people” are crucial to Facebook’s future. Now the company In its 20-year-old social network, it has made a number of changes so that young users spend more time in the application.
Updates include a new “local” section in the Facebook app aimed at providing local community information, a renewed focus on scheduled events on the service, and a new “Communities” feature for Messenger. Meta claims the changes will help young people “explore their interests and connect with the world beyond their close friends”.
Highlighting events is not an entirely new strategy for the company. He launched an independent events app and then a year later focusing on “local” businesses and events. This program in 2021.
The meta takes a slightly different approach this time around. A new “local” section will feature your community’s event listings, as well as posts from Marketplace listings, reels, and Facebook groups. Local news with meta Meta’s announcement is notably absent.
Along with the local tab, the company is also trying to make events more prominent on Facebook. Facebook will now provide personalized event recommendations in the form of weekly and weekend digests delivered to users via in-app notifications. The company is also changing how invitations to Facebook events work so that users can send invitations to their Instagram contacts via SMS and email.
Groups on Facebook, which Meta says are among the most used features by young people, are also featured in this update. Meta is experimenting with “customizable Group AI” that allows admins to create a bot that can chat with members to answer questions based on posts shared in the group. Elsewhere in the app, Meta launches an Instagram-like test and a dedicated space for Reels within Facebook.
In Messenger, Meta is adding a new “Communities” feature, a concept it previously introduced . Communities allow “small to medium-sized” groups to organize their own conversations and interact more like a Facebook group. Members can create topic-based chats and are equipped with moderation and management tools to control who can join.
The changes are part of Meta’s broader effort to bring young people back to its app with features tailored to how they use social media. “Facebook is still for everyone, but to build for the next generation of social media consumers, we’ve made significant changes with young people in mind,” said Tom Alison, head of Facebook apps. .
It is unclear whether Meta’s latest efforts will be successful. The company says there are more than 40 million young people on Facebook in the US and Canada, “the highest number in over 3 years.” But that’s still a relatively small percentage of its total users in the region and an even smaller fraction of its users overall.
