If I tell Facebook I want to see more or less of something, does that mean I tell it, for example, that I don’t want to see politics?
For now, the feature mainly works on the content author. But we look at ways to consider other cues as well and begin to ask, “OK, Steven, did you mean more content from Tom, or did you mean more content about the New York Yankees?”
The other feature you announced allows users to request more content from friends and family. I wonder if that is a correction for the July Announcement which opened up the home feed to all kinds of content from people you’ve never met. Isn’t the Discovery Engine a departure from Facebook’s original focus on people in your social chart?
Facebook is still at its core about friends and family. Our discovery machine involved a few different things. One is: how do we connect you with the people you already know? But also, how do we put you in touch with the people you might want to get to know.
You once worked on a product called People you may know. Now Meta tells me about people I should know, even if I’ll never meet them. That’s a big difference.
That’s something people have told us that they really want to see, especially young adults. People want to use Facebook and these social media apps to explore more of their interests. I’ve chosen to be part of some cooking groups on Facebook, such as a great group where all people share new restaurants in the Bay Area. I love it. But now Facebook is also learning to say, “Hey, there are some great cooking artists out there,” and it’s learned that I’m particularly interested in barbecuing. It has shown me content from some great creators who inspire me to cook and start following them.
You mention young people. Facebook has been losing that demographic for years, and very few young people use it, or at least many claim they don’t. Since changing your Feed to specifically target this audience, have you seen an increase in their use of the product?
When we say young, we mean young adults, 18 to 29 year olds. We really started to focus our product development on them, around roles, around recommendations, to make it easier for people to share stories or posts, in addition to Feed. All that work is inspired by the research we’ve built around the needs of young adults. We still have a lot of work to do, but I’m quite optimistic about what I see so far.
The cynical way of looking at your changes is that young people are now turning to TikTok on Facebook, not to make connections, but just to entertain themselves. And you don’t want to miss that.
People still want to share with their friends, but they’re increasingly using things like our Stories product, which is ephemeral, with the story lasting 24 hours. And they want to share experiences with their friends through messaging, where I can have a more intimate conversation with a few friends.
