Did Zuck Just Drop Acid?
Nah. But he’s definitely getting high.
So lots of folks asking me about Facebook’s news today. I’ve read what I can, and here’s my initial take, in a thread. First, here’s the news from FB:
This is from Adam Mosseri, head of News Feed (he’s speaking at Shift Forum next month), and includes a post from Mark Zuckerberg as well. Facebook is focusing on changing the product goals from engagement on content to engagement with family and friends’ post.
In the post and in news coverage Facebook and Zuckerberg say they want to refocus the service to “make people happy” after being on FB. That’s a suggestion I made in my piece last week:
In that piece I posed two scenarios, one of which was “Zuck drops acid and refocuses his product team away from engagement for engagement sake.” So did he?
No. But he seems to have taken a pretty sweet drag on a joint.
The News Feed product team isn’t the ad model product team, and it’s the ad model that drives the toxicity at its core. However, this is still a significant move. I’m guessing FB has modeled the bejesus out of this and knows that after a short dip, advertisers will pay more to break into that new News Feed with their content, and revenue will normalize.
Meanwhile, just because your friend and family shared it, and others responded to it, doesn’t mean it ain’t toxic. That’s pretty much how Fake News spreads.
Oh, and I’m so tired of “we’ve studied this trend carefully by looking at the academic research and doing our own research with leading experts at universities.” What research? With whom? Is it peer reviewed? Open it up!
So far, FB stock is down .05%, or nine cents, in after hours trading. Pretty sure that’s the shrug FB was looking for. More as it develops….
