Facebook’s Private Future: Key Takeaways from F8 2019
What happens when a platform that was built on publicly shared messages, photos and data upends its entire business model? Here are some key takeaways from the F8 2019 keynote presentation.
Rocket to Success
Facebook launched its public social media platform in early 2004. Initially serving as an alternative to the then-social-media-champion, MySpace, Facebook’s design, flexibility and focus on connecting friends with similar interests rocketed the new platform from newcomer to social media sovereign in five short years. Despite the arrival of other social media platforms that aspired to break away slivers of Facebook’s throne, the likes of Twitter, SnapChat, and the defunct Google+ all fell short in overtaking the behemoth founded by Mark Zuckerberg. As for the only competitor that truly threatened Facebook’s market share, Instagram was purchased in 2012, further solidifying Facebook’s dominance in the crowded social media landscape.
Today, Facebook is easily the most popular social media platform at 2.3 billion users strong. Even companies as large and powerful as Facebook, however, aren’t immune to their own unique hurdles, which Zuckerberg was quick to address this week at the annual F8 developer conference keynote.
A Fundamental Upheaval of Facebook’s Heritage
Amidst the breaches, scandals and other complications that have plagued the social media giant since early 2018, Zuckerberg is leaning on a massive brand philosophy shift to win back the trust of its users. What Zuckerberg proposed is a fundamental upheaval of Facebook’s heritage as a public platform, stating:
The future is private. Over time, I believe that a private social platform will be even more important to our lives than our digital town squares. So today, we’re going to start talking about what this could look like as a product, what it means to have your social experience be more intimate, and how we need to change the way we run this company in order to build this.
This isn’t just about building new products. It’s a major shift in how we run this company. We believe that for the future, people want a privacy-focused social platform. I believe that if we build out a fully encrypted interoperable service… that’s going to be an important contribution to the world.
Unraveling the Future
A win for consumers.
It takes a lot of influence for a brand as large as Facebook — both in active users and infrastructure — to completely change its business trajectory. Where Facebook once thrived on the distribution of public information, their new path to amplify private social connection is huge.
Consumers deserve to have their personal data protected; privacy can and should be a fundamental right in the digital age of online connection. From a technology advocate perspective, Facebook’s emphasis on encrypted communication is a welcome change from the status quo of tech giants playing fast and loose with users’ data for the sake of monetization.
From a marketing perspective, however, Facebook’s privacy focus introduced more questions than solutions.
A big question mark for brands and advertisers.
Facebook earned approximately $54.8 billion in advertising revenue in 2018. There’s zero chance Zuckerberg would walk away from this kind of money. Facebook’s ads platform as it exists today, however, is a very public resource; it relies on granular user data and targeting to ensure ads are being placed in front of the users who are most likely to invest in the product or service that’s being shown.
If the vast majority of user interactions will soon take place in private, encrypted channels, how will Facebook’s ad system work? How can Facebook keep its promise to consumers that all communications are private and encrypted while also appeasing advertisers with the consumer data, targeting resources, and analytical metrics that they need?
It’s apparent that Facebook’s ads platform will also have to evolve to better align with their focus on privacy, but how this will work remains a mystery.
The Facebook of Tomorrow Starts Today
Facebook’s new direction has a long way to go before it’s fully realized, but the first steps have already been put into place. You may have noticed this morning when checking your feed that the Facebook app for iOS and Android have been updated with a new look; the web version of this redesign will arrive later this summer, and the remaining changes will roll out in increments throughout 2019.
To conclude his presentation, Zuckerberg left the audience with one final notion:
This is about building the kind of future we want to live in. To build a world where we can be ourselves and live freely and know that our private moments are only going to be seen by the people they want, where we can come together around community and commerce, where we build in the tools that we need to keep us safe from the beginning and prevent harm and we then are able to focus on all the good people are able to do. Both in private and in public, both the living room and the town squares.
Start a Conversation
How do you think Facebook’s new direction will affect both consumers and the many brands that rely on the platform to share their products and services? Are you optimistic about the future, or do Zuckerberg’s statements bring more concern than ease?
Share your thoughts with us on Facebook or Twitter by commenting on this post.
Thanks for reading!
