During the Q4 earnings call with investors on Wednesday, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg hinted at a “return to OG Facebook” as one of his primary objectives for 2025. Though specific changes were not elaborated upon, it’s evident that Meta is eager to attract younger Facebook users to ensure its relevance for future generations.
When asked about his vision for this “OG Facebook,” Zuckerberg confirmed that it would be a key focus for the upcoming year, emphasizing that the company intends to invest significant time and resources into it.
“There are numerous opportunities to enhance [Facebook] and make it more culturally impactful than it is today,” he stated.
Zuckerberg also cautioned investors that these forthcoming changes to Facebook might necessitate certain sacrifices regarding “maximizing business outcomes in the short term,” indicating a potential impact on revenues. He shared that product updates would start to be implemented over the next six months.
“I believe some aspects of this will reflect how Facebook was originally utilized back in the day,” Zuckerberg mentioned, while keeping other details tightly under wraps.
The decreasing interest in Facebook among younger demographics poses a significant challenge for the tech giant, particularly as its core adult users continue to age.
A study conducted by eMarketer last August highlighted that U.S. Gen Z individuals aged 18 to 24 spend substantially more time on TikTok, followed by Instagram and Snapchat — effectively doubling their time spent on those platforms compared to the broader U.S. adult population. Additionally, a 2024 survey by Pew Research indicated that Facebook usage among U.S. teens (ages 13-17) has decreased sharply from 71% in 2014-2015 to just 33%.
Interestingly, what engages Gen Z isn’t primarily the social networking capabilities of Facebook; instead, they are drawn to its more practical features, such as Facebook Marketplace.
Meta has long acknowledged these hurdles, having introduced a Gen Z-centric redesign of its aging platform in October 2024, with promises of increased focus on local community information, videos, and Facebook Groups, among other initiatives.
The company aims to build on these changes with a further overhaul of the Facebook experience in 2025, though the challenge of competing with Gen Z’s favored app, TikTok, remains an open question.
Moreover, Gen Z users have indicated a readiness to distance themselves from Meta, particularly if TikTok remains banned in the U.S. Instead of reverting to Facebook, they turned to RedNote, another Chinese app similar to TikTok, during the period of the temporary U.S. TikTok bans.
It may be a daunting task, if not impossible, for Facebook to recapture a younger audience by reverting to its “OG” essence. The platform had previously attempted to revive its initial sense of exclusivity with the launch of a feature called Campus in 2020, aimed specifically at college students. However, this initiative was discontinued after just 18 months due to lackluster engagement.
In addition, Meta has experimented with other avenues, such as online dating, in hopes of attracting new users, though with minimal success.
Meanwhile, new social networks are emerging on the open social web, utilizing protocols like ActivityPub (as seen with Mastodon) and AT Protocol (used by Bluesky), which empower users to regain control over their data and social interactions, separate from the centralized, billionaire-controlled platforms of Big Tech. As these platforms grow, they will likely pose a significant competition for initiatives like “OG Facebook.”
For years, Meta has sought to reassure investors about the decline of Facebook.
In Q4 2019, Meta (formerly Facebook) launched new metrics known as family daily active people and family monthly active people for investors. Later, in Q1 2024, the company shifted away from per-app metrics by eliminating daily and monthly active users from its reports, favoring metrics surrounding its family of apps.
In its disclosures at that time, Meta stated that the intent was to better highlight user engagement across all its products, rather than just Facebook and Messenger. Additionally, this strategy likely aimed to obscure Facebook’s decline within the broader “family” of apps.
Compiled by Techarena.au.
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