Accused of copying TikTok, Mark Zuckerberg assumes his strategy for Facebook and Instagram

Meta has, this Wednesday, July 27, again experienced one of those moments that fears any founder of a technology company: for the first time since its creation in 2004, the company created by Mark Zuckerberg has seen its income decline. Revenue for Meta, parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, fell 1% in the second quarter compared to the same period in 2021, to 28.8 billion dollars (28.4 billion euros) . Net income fell 36% to $6.7 billion.

In the previous quarter, the world leader in social networks (2.88 billion daily users) had already announced the first drop in the number of Internet users connecting to Facebook each day. Meta is facing a serious crisis which casts doubt on its ability to return to double-digit growth. “We are optimistic about the long term,” tried to reassure Mark Zuckerberg, attributing the main problems to the macroeconomic context, “worse than three months ago”.

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The war in Ukraine has indeed forced the company to stop its activities in Russia, inflation and the fear of a recession are weighing on advertising expenditure and the strength of the dollar is reducing activity outside the United States (without this effect changes, revenues would have increased by 3%, assured Meta). But the group also faces fundamental problems. The first is competition from TikTok, the Chinese social network which, at the end of 2021, passed the one billion user mark, with growth of 45%, according to social network specialist Hootsuite.

Very short videos

The main threat of TikTok lies in its format of very short videos of a few seconds and its mechanics: to offer the Internet user the content deemed the most entertaining, from accounts that he does not necessarily follow. Meta chose the copycat strategy, launching its own short video format, Reels. To impose it, he began to show it more and more in the feed of users on Instagram, where it became the default video format.

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On Facebook, an interface change should highlight these suggested contents, while the photos and videos of friends and accounts followed will be accessible in a separate tab. Problem: these changes are causing misunderstanding and protests from some users. “Stop trying to be TikTok, I just want to see pictures of my friends”, posted a post on Instagramshared in particular by the star of the network Kylie Jenner (360 million subscribers) and her sister, Kim Kardashian (326 million), Monday, July 25.

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