As a platform, it is key to understand how to attract and maintain your users. For a long time, Facebook managed to do this very effectively: it became a huge network very fast. Meanwhile, the company acquired WhatsApp and Instagram and built Facebook Messenger.
However, since the start of 2018, Facebook has received a lot of bad press, because multiple events showed that the company is struggling to protect the privacy of its users (TechTarget, 2019). Since people seem to become increasingly aware of the importance of their privacy, Facebook has to make a big move in order to maintain its userbase.
A few months ago, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg published a blogpost (Facebook, 2019) in which he describes the future the company. The blogpost included the following statement:
“I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won’t stick around forever. This is the future I hope we will help bring about.”
In an interview with WIRED (2019), Zuckerberg adds to this that he sees a demand for two types of platforms in the future: town squares and living rooms. Town squares are platforms like Facebook and Instagram where people interact publicly and living rooms are platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger where people interact privately. Zuckerberg goes on by stating that his company has been very busy in the past 15 years with building services and products around the town square, while there is an increasing demand for the development of living room facilities. Therefore, the latter will be the main focus of Facebook in the coming years.
Interesting thoughts, right? It is clear that Zuckerberg wants to restore the reputation of Facebook and turn it into a brand that takes privacy seriously. At the same time, the new road has its own challenges:
First, Facebook earns money by selling targeted ads. How can they continue doing this when a significantly increasing part of their user data will become end-to-end encrypted? Zuckerberg himself admits that it will take some time before they exactly know what the impact on their business model will be.
Second, end-to-end encryption also means that it will be harder to prevent the spread of fake news. Furthermore, it facilitates private conversations between criminals. How can we then make sure Facebook has a positive impact on society?
Do you think Facebook can handle a transformation like this? And is Zuckerberg just working on the company’s reputation or does he really want to build a product that everyone loves?
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