Mark Zuckerberg’s unexpected confession about TikTok and the new trend in social networks

Recently Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook and considered one of the forerunners of the social media boom, acknowledged that he failed to notice the new ways in which people interact with the content they consume on digital platforms.

In the framework of an interview with analyst Ben Thompson, published in the ‘Statechery’ newsletter, Zuckerberg stated that now the people go more often to their social media “sources” to find engaging content, instead of going to the media shared by people who follow.

That’s the way it is, Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, admitted that he did not foresee this new trend in social networks, which has contributed to the growth of rival platforms such as TikTok.

According to the founder of Facebook, although users still interact with the content that their friends share in their feeds, the general trend is has oriented towards the use of its own feed as a resource to find contentwhich is sent to friends via message and in that space the interaction is generated.

“So in that world, it’s actually a little less important who produces the content that you’re finding, you just want the best content,” the Meta CEO said in his interview.

Zuckerberg also acknowledged that TikTok is a “very effective competitor” and also admitted that his company had a somewhat slow reaction to this rival because the Asian platform’s proposal “did not fit my pattern of something social, it seemed more like a shorter version of YouTube.”

Finally, Mark Zuckerberg stressed that at this time the spearhead of Meta in the face of competition from its rivals will be the development of an artificial intelligence that is capable of recommending content to users in different formats, this includes photos, text and short videos.

“Sometimes I want to watch specific videos, but a lot of times I just want the best,” he said.

According to experts, TikTok has had a significant growth in popularity thanks to its algorithm, which specializes in generating recommendations for short videos that are of interest to users, since these suggestions are based on habits and viewing history.

Before this panorama, the success of TikTok has posed a considerable challenge for Metabecause in recent months it has suffered a reduction in users of its social networks.

Copying to TikTok was not the solution

At the time, the company considered incorporating features from its rival on Instagram as a measure to keep users on the platform. However, this measure was reversed when the users of the service expressed a rejection of the initiative by indicating that the platform intended to become a copy of TikTok.

At the time, the movement of users dissatisfied with the change of Instagram was joined by well-known celebrities such as the Kim and Kylie Kardashian sisters, who actively made a series of publications where they asked Meta to stop trying to turn Instagram into a TikTok-like app.

Thanks to the celebrity push, the phrase “make Instagram be Instagram again” quickly gained traction. as a slogan that welcomed users who opposed the change in the social network. In fact, hundreds of thousands of signatures supporting the initiative were collected on the change.org petition platform.

Given this scenario, Adam Mosseri, director of Instagram, responded to users with a post on Twitter where he explained what would be the news that would reach the platform by then, in addition, clarified that they were functionalities that were under development and that they would be tested with a small group of users.

However, months later the company announced that it would postpone the implementation of the new functions that would make it similar to TikTok. For that moment Target indicated that he preferred to “take some time” to make the appropriate changes on Instagram.

For his part, Adam Mosseri offered an interview for ‘The Verge’ where he confirmed that the changes that had been made would be gradually reverted.

“I’m glad we took the risk; if we don’t fail from time to time, it’s that we’re not thinking big enough or being bold enough”, Mosseri also declared from his Twitter account.

Mark Zuckerberg now proposes meetings with holograms

In an interview with Ben Thompson of Stratechery, Zuckerberg pointed out that meeting other people through holograms is a possibility that could be a reality in the next five years.

The CEO of Meta stated that in the next few years it would be a usual practice to hold meetings through the use of holograms. “It would be as if you were still in Taiwan; basically your hologram is here at Meta headquarters, and it feels like we’re there,” Zuckerberg said.

The founder of Facebook argued that in the near future, users could have a 3D model of themselves on a device and with this resource interactions could be generated that would go far beyond a video call.