Facebook tries to bring back in-app messaging features as it competes with TikTok | CNN Business

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Nearly a decade after Facebook angered some users by separating messaging features from its flagship social media app and forcing people to download a separate app to chat with friends, the company is now trying to reverse the move.

In an interview with CNN, the head of Facebook, Tom Alison, said that the platform is testing the possibility of returning messaging capabilities to the Facebook app so that users can share content more easily without having to use the Messenger app. The test comes as Facebook looks to beat competition from TikTok by strengthening its position as both a platform for discovering new content and discussing it.

“We believe that content is not only fueled by consuming it, but by starting conversations and starting that thread with your friends or being something that you can share with a group of people who share your interests,” Alison said. “I think what’s going to set Facebook and Instagram apart from TikTok and others is just the depth of being able to start a conversation with your friends from that content and have that kind of social dimension.”

The move, which Alison also announced in a blog post on Tuesday, comes after Facebook overhauled its strategy last year amid concerns about a stagnant and aging user base. The platform would no longer be simply about connecting friends and family. Instead, founder Mark Zuckerberg wanted Facebook to become a “discovery engine.”

Facebook redesigned its home feed to show more entertaining posts from across the platform, with AI-based content recommendations, rather than showing posts from those specifically in a user’s network. (A new, separate tab fulfilled the latter’s wish.) The goal was clear: to keep users engaged longer and help the platform better compete with TikTok and its steady stream of recommended content.

Nine months later, that change has started to pay off, Alison told CNN. The platform reported last month that it reached 2 billion daily active users in the December quarter.

“A lot of the narrative leading up to this has been that Facebook is in decline or the best days of Facebook are behind us,” Alison said, “and part of what we’re trying to do with this milestone is say, ‘hey, look . , that’s not true.”

There have been no shortage of rumors about Facebook’s demise over the years, from its admission of having a “teenage problem” a decade ago to the most recent series of PR debacles for the social network and its parent company, Meta. The rapid rise of TikTok and even the success of Facebook’s sister service Instagram have also taken some of the luster out of the aging social network that Zuckerberg launched in a bedroom nearly 20 years ago. But his audience has grown again, for now.

Alison, who has been in charge of the Facebook app since July 2021, said the introduction of the “discovery engine” strategy is just the beginning of a bigger change for the platform, already that Facebook is working to forge a path to continued growth and relevance over the next two decades.

“For the last almost 20 years … we’re really known by friends and family, but for the next 20 years, what we’re really working on is being known by social discovery,” he said. “It’s going to be about helping you connect with the people you know, the people you want to meet and the people you should meet.”

While Facebook and Instagram have struggled in their attempts to keep up with TikTok, even through copycat features like Reels, Alison argues that Facebook has an advantage over TikTok thanks to its roots in helping people connect with their networks.

For some creators, for example, Facebook has become a place to create fan groups and have conversations beyond the content they share on Instagram and TikTok, Alison said. “I think it’s helping them get closer to their fans on Facebook in a way that they can’t on other platforms.”

As Facebook charts its evolution, it will face what Zuckerberg has called the company’s “year of efficiency,” an effort to cut costs after wider recognition from the tech industry and the ‘skepticism from investors around his expensive plan to focus his business model around. the future version of the internet he calls the metaverse.

“One of the things we’re embracing with the year of efficiency is prioritization and, frankly, focusing more effort on some of our biggest bets,” Alison said. Over the past year, the platform has shut down some smaller efforts, such as its newsletter subscription service, in favor of investing in key areas like AI. “That’s a big part of the culture that we’re instituting at Meta is like, how can we do fewer things better? And how do we do them, sometimes, faster? Efficiency isn’t just about cost savings.”