When Facebook launched in 2004, it had a clear goal: to connect people. Connecting and sharing with friends lay at the very core of the service. Twenty years later, Meta itself admits that this no longer applies.
In its own testimony to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Meta said that personal social networks basically no longer exist. Today’s users spend only 17% of their time on Facebook, and 7% on Instagram, on content from accounts they follow, including friends, brands or media. The rest goes to reels and posts from accounts they do not follow at all. This is so-called unconnected content. The new generation of social media users simply no longer wants to be connected with friends through classic social networks. Nearly 50% of new young Facebook users have no friends at all 90 days after creating a profile.
The end of sharing, the rise of the endless feed
Social networks have turned into recommendation systems, where relevance plays the main role, not relationships. TikTok and Meta have invested billions in AI algorithms that can hold attention longer than any friend.
Meta even backed this up with an internal experiment. When it increased the share of posts from friends in the feed by 20%, users spent less time on the platform. When it boosted the share of short videos instead, engagement grew again.
This is not only about Meta. TikTok and YouTube take a similarly cool view of “sharing between friends”. During the FTC court case, TikTok’s operations chief Adam Presser said that just 1% of the time users spend on the app goes to the Friends tab. Similarly, YouTube admitted that it had discontinued its attempts at direct messages and “social features” because they did not catch on. Today’s networks simply no longer want to be a space between people, but a space between people and content.
Where has attention moved?
People are not spending less time on networks, just differently. They are not looking for connections, but for content that entertains, inspires or sells. And this is where influencers come in. According to data from Morning Consult, 30% of American adults have already bought a product from an influencer. For Generation Z it is as high as 53%, and for millennials 47%. What is more, up to 80% of customers of influencer brands would buy again, and almost half (47%) say their experience was better than with traditional brands.
Influencers are thus becoming not only media, but brands in their own right. Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez and Feastables by YouTuber MrBeast are just two examples of brands that have used their communities better than most traditional companies.
A new economy of trust
While classic social networks are losing their original purpose, influencers have taken over their role and offer relationship, authenticity and community, just in a more commercial form. Fans no longer look for friends, but for people whose opinions they trust.
What the friends’ newsfeed once did is now done by a recommendation algorithm. And what advertising once did is now handled by the influencer. The social network has turned into an economy of trust, and every scroll is a potential purchase.
Comments