Facebook, the social media that started the monopoly-like empire for communication.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, knows that users who have been using its platform since it was founded in 2004, are mostly millennials, a generation that can defined as people who were born between 1981 and 1996.
This generation was in their teens or early twenties when Facebook became widely available to university students and then to the general public.
Fast forward to 2024, Facebook needs to carter to younger generations, in order to keep its wheels going.
This is why the company said that it's focusing on young adults, mainly generation z's.
And in the world where AI is thriving, Meta is also going full force on using technology on Facebook.
In a website post, Tom Alison, Head of Facebook, wrote that:
"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."
"We upgraded our Reels and Feed ranking technologies to more effectively deliver recommendations. We invented a new model architecture – that can learn from large datasets very efficiently – and it drove significant improvements in our pilot with Facebook Reels. Over the next year or so, this advanced recommendations technology will power more products, including our entire video ecosystem, and our Feed recommendations."
Meta also said that it's already attracting the highest number of young adult users in the last three years, in a bid to change the platform's reputation as an older generation fort.
More than 40 million adults aged 18 to 29 in the U.S. and Canada are now using Facebook every day, the social media company said.
This growth reflects the company's efforts in to grab the attention of young adults who have flocked to the short video app TikTok, owned by ByteDance from China.
"Who is Facebook for? Is that for my parents?" said Alison.
But unlike user who use TikTok, younger generations seem to come to Facebook initially to use parts like Marketplace, Group, and Dating.
"Although most of these parts do not display ads, their use encourages broad involvement," Allison added.
"When they were on Facebook, they then looked around things that were happening in the Feed or from Reels," he said, referring to Meta's short TikTok-like video product.
Beyond that, Facebook has upgraded its Reels and Feed's ranking technologies to more effectively deliver recommendations.
"We invented a new model architecture – that can learn from large datasets very efficiently – and it drove significant improvements in our pilot with Facebook Reels. Over the next year or so, this advanced recommendations technology will power more products, including our entire video ecosystem, and our Feed recommendations," Allison continues.
"By the end of 2026, our goal is to have the world’s best recommendation technology."
Besides its focus on AI, Facebook is also making video improvements, including an updated fullscreen video player, and a slider to skip around in longer videos.
Facebook is also making it easier for anyone to become a creator to earn money on the platform.
Facebook, co-founded by Mark Zuckerberg in Harvard University dormitories, before spreading across various campuses in the U.S.. After it was launched, it quickly became a default mass communication platform for internet user generation.
The app garnered 50 million users in its first three years and now has 3.2 billion users globally.
Looking forward, as older generations start using its app less, Facebook is putting more effort in attracting younger generations.