Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reveals his company's future vision. He said Facebook will focus on serving young adult users and pour billions of dollars into building the metaverse world.
Zuckerberg made this in a call with investors following Facebook's announcement of earnings in the third quarter of 2021, and shortly after Facebook and Instagram were reported to be losing teens and youth users.
Zuckerberg said Facebook would do everything it could to attract the attention of young people aged 18 to 29, even if doing so would be at the expense of older users. Referring to the success of competitors like TikTok, Zuckerberg said Instagram Reels will play an equally important role as Stories.
"We also hope to bring significant changes to Instagram and Facebook in the next year to lean more towards video and make Reels a more central part of the user experience," Zuckerberg said.
In addition, Zuckerberg revealed that Facebook will be 'retooling' internally to focus on young people. He added that this process would take several years.
Facebook has recently been hit by various problems related to young users. Leaked internal Facebook research results reveal that Instagram has a negative effect on teenagers' mental health. At the same time, other internal documents reveal that Facebook and Instagram are starting to lose users in their teens and young adults.
In addition to focusing on serving young people, Facebook will also prioritize the development of the metaverse, which is currently Zuckerberg's ambition. The Menlo Park-based company will disburse USD 10 billion for Facebook Reality Labs, the metaverse division tasked with creating AR and VR devices, software and content.
Zuckerberg said the metaverse would drive digital commerce to hundreds of billions of dollars. But he did not comment on Facebook's plans to change its name to emphasize its focus on the world of the metaverse.
"Our goal is to help the metaverse reach billions of people," Zuckerberg said.
On the same occasion, Zuckerberg also commented on the leaked Facebook Papers, a series of articles written based on internal documents provided by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen. The document contains a range of internal issues facing Facebook, including its efforts to combat hate speech and misinformation.
The 37-year-old called the articles a coordinated effort to give a false picture of Facebook.
"Any honest admission must be clear that this problem is not about social media. This means, whatever Facebook does, we will never be able to solve it alone," concluded Zuckerberg.