Facebook is celebrating a major milestone this year, reaching 2 billion daily active users on the app.
“Contrary to reports otherwise, Facebook is not dead nor dying,” Tom Alison, Head of Facebook shared.
In a Meta blog post, Alison discussed the company’s focus for the year, which includes AI, Creators and Monetization, and Messaging.
AI Improvements
Facebook is using AI technology to better recommend users with photos, texts, groups, short and long-form videos, and Reels that align with their interests.
“This is a massive technological undertaking and AI-powered recommendations are delivered and refined in response to people’s direct feedback through tools like our Show More or Show Less feature,” he explained.
Alison also gave an example of how this technology can benefit the user - instead of searching or depending on word of mouth to find a Group, AI will show users public Group content based on their interests.
Creator and Monetization Support
The company is also using AI to connect content creators to their potential audience properly and added a feature that make it easier to find creators based on interest, such as rising creator labels for creators, a suggestion unit for Feed recommendations, and an upgraded Follow action to help users follow creators they discovered from recommendations or comments.
“We believe our combination of simple-to-use formats, easy access to your most important audiences and world class AI that can deliver content to the people who will appreciate it the most — will make Facebook the best place for social discovery and sharing,” Alison wrote.
To further help creators, Facebook has also expanded its Professional Mode for Profiles, giving creators access to monetization opportunities and professional tools to grow.
“This year, we’re focused on adapting and enhancing these tools for short-form video. We’ll continue expanding our ads on Facebook Reels tests to help more creators earn ad revenue for their Reels and grow virtual gifting via Stars on Reels,” he added.
Messaging
Lastly, the social media platform will focus on improving its Messaging services, testing the ability to access the Messenger inbox straight from the Facebook app, which the company hopes to roll out in the future.
This comes after previous efforts to make messaging more engaging for its users and communities, introducing community chats among Facebook groups last year which saw a 50% increase in usage by December 2022.
“Over the coming year, we’ll build more ways to integrate messaging features in Facebook. Ultimately, we want it to be easy and convenient for people to connect and share, whether in the Messenger app or directly within Facebook,” the Head of Facebook stated.
