{"id":13402,"date":"2022-08-30T14:40:55","date_gmt":"2022-08-30T14:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2022\/08\/30\/how-the-head-of-facebook-plans-to-compete-with-tiktok-and-win-back-gen-z\/"},"modified":"2022-08-30T14:40:58","modified_gmt":"2022-08-30T14:40:58","slug":"how-the-head-of-facebook-plans-to-compete-with-tiktok-and-win-back-gen-z","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2022\/08\/30\/how-the-head-of-facebook-plans-to-compete-with-tiktok-and-win-back-gen-z\/","title":{"rendered":"How the head of Facebook plans to compete with TikTok and win back Gen Z"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source: https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/23328278\/facebook-tom-alison-interview-instagram-meta-zuckerberg-news-feed-discovery-engine-tiktok<\/a>
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In this special episode of Decoder<\/em>, Verge<\/em> deputy editor Alex Heath and Recode<\/em> senior reporter Shirin Ghaffary talk to Meta\u2019s Tom Alison, who runs the Facebook app.<\/p>\n

Alex and Shirin are the co-hosts of the newest season of Vox Media\u2019s podcast Land of the Giants<\/em><\/a>. This season is about Facebook and Meta, and they have been reporting on Meta and working on Land of the Giants<\/em> for many months \u2014 the season finale comes out tomorrow. Along the way, they interviewed Tom about Facebook and the News Feed.<\/p>\n

Facebook has a lot of challenges, but it seems like its biggest problem is TikTok, which is capturing more and more of young people\u2019s attention in particular. Facebook spent years building out a social graph about friends and family that, it turns out, is less interesting than just being shown videos that TikTok thinks you might like. So, now, Alison is leading an effort to make both the Facebook and Instagram feeds more like TikTok. <\/p>\n

We talk a lot on Decoder<\/em> about the tradeoffs leaders have to make, and that\u2019s one big example of a tradeoff made by the executive who has led multiple eras of the News Feed, really since the beginning. It\u2019s also an interesting window into how they make decisions at one of the world\u2019s most talked-about companies.<\/p>\n

This was Alison\u2019s first big interview since taking over as the head of Facebook at Meta, and it covers a lot of ground. So much ground, actually, that Alex and Shirin realized it would be valuable for people to hear the whole chat. Parts of it appeared in their fifth episode<\/a> about the future of Facebook and the Feed. They recorded this interview in late July, right after Facebook announced some big changes to the Feed, which they talked about.<\/p>\n

Okay, Tom Alison, head of Facebook. Here we go. <\/p>\n

Alex Heath: We are talking to Tom Alison, the head of Facebook, on the day the discovery engine\/Feeds tab was announced. Can you tell us about that announcement and the evolution of what used to be called the News Feed?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tom Alison: The Feeds tab is going to allow you to see all of the content from your friends, Pages, Groups, and Favorites in chronological order. It\u2019s almost like a throwback to old-school Facebook, which I think is very cool. We know that a lot of people come to Facebook thinking, \u201cI want to see what\u2019s up with my friends,\u201d and this is going to make that even easier. <\/p>\n

We have also renamed the tab you see when you open the app to Home. This is signaling that this is going to be a home for a lot of the different content you see on Facebook. It is still going to include the content you know, but it is now also going to include content we think might be interesting to you, that you might share or discuss with your Groups or friends. This content is increasingly powered by AI, which is getting very good at identifying \u2014 of all the great content across Facebook \u2014 some of the things that are going to be interesting to you. <\/p>\n

We are setting the stage for this next evolution of Facebook. A lot of it is coming from our belief system that, ultimately, Facebook is a tool to allow you to express yourself and connect with other people. This is an extension of that belief system, but within the context of technological innovation that is happening. <\/p>\n

It is easier than ever for people to express themselves. We have higher-bandwidth phones and connections to be able to express ourselves through multimedia and video, and we have more sophisticated AI that can look at the billions of pieces of content that are being created across Facebook \u2014 and Meta more broadly \u2014 and deliver the piece that might be right for you in that moment. <\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s an exciting time for Facebook, but I see it as an evolution of what we have always been trying to do. When we see a new technical wave of innovation, we always ask, \u201cHow do we build that around people?\u201d That is still going to be core to what we do.<\/p>\n

AH: Was TikTok the consumer product that showed you guys this model working at scale? Was there anything else that led you to this? Why go this way now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

TA: I will give you a little bit of the backstory. You might have read or heard a little over a year ago what Mark said on one of the earnings calls, which was, \u201cWe\u2019re going to start looking at the needs of young adults and prioritizing the needs of young adults.\u201d <\/p>\n

Before I led the Facebook app, I was immersing myself in all of the young adult research and working with the team. We saw that there was a big generational trend happening in how people want to use social media. Just as background, the way we define \u201cyoung adults\u201d is anybody in the age range of 18 to 29 years old. Now Facebook itself is around 18 years old, so we are talking about a generation that grew up with social media, using it and learning how to integrate it into their lives in different ways than I did.<\/p>\n

Spoiler alert: I am not a young adult. I came from a different set of usage there. As we were deeply immersing ourselves in how the next generation was using and wanting to use social media, we saw that there were lots of changes in how people wanted to share and connect with their friends. This incoming generation is curious; they are finding and discovering their way in life. Recommendations \u2014 things that are appealing to their interests, that help them shape where they want to go, who they want to be, and what they want to discuss with their friends \u2014 are a much bigger part of their social media experiences than I think were part of mine in the era earlier. A lot of this, in fact most of it, was informed by our study of the fact that we are entering almost decade three of Facebook and social media. There is a big change happening. <\/p>\n

Now, I talked to you about this last time. Seeing what TikTok did was certainly illuminating. We saw this powerful format, short-form video, and we saw how people were using it to express themselves. For me, very viscerally, too, there was this recognition that, \u201cWow, this format where you have somebody speaking directly to you, in this very personality-driven way, feels more like you are connected to these creators. They are authentic, they are expressing their personality, you can learn from them.\u201d We can riff more on that, but it was very exciting. I think TikTok did a nice job showing folks what that could be.<\/p>\n

Integrating formats into the Facebook experience, and integrating tools for self-expression and to help people share and discuss what they see from other people, has always been core to Facebook\u2019s identity and evolution as a service. It made a lot of sense for us to integrate short-form video and actually go bigger on recommendations. <\/p>\n

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