Everybody knows that Facebook core business isn’t socialization but advertising. And the former is instrumental to the latter. The latest changes to the platform recently announced by Mr.Zuckerberg at the F8, the annual developers’ conference, are to be interpreted according to such logic. Products need to be interconnected, thus Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp shall interact, in addition to featuring a new design and a better balance between the “public place” status and private sharing spaces which are to be used to establish a better relationship with users. He then gave his green light to highlighting groups and centralizing communities to be lived as “virtual lounges”. Which practically means that users will be able to publish, read and interact with contents via Facebook, Instagram and WhatApp in new ways, and that also Messenger, Instagram Direct Messages, and WhatsApp will be able to operate jointly, enabling group members to interface more and more easily. And all such interactions will take place under the protective umbrella of end-to-end (E2E) encryption system, so that senders and addressees only will be allowed to see posts contents ( Mark Zuckerberg’s turn of the screw: “the future is private”).
Everything belongs to Mark but not everybody knows it
By following this path, the social media tycoon hopes to achieve a twofold result: reducing the pressure which has been killing him after several privacy-related scandals, by renewing users’ trust in his systems, and creating new opportunities to increase advertising, especially through videos and app stories.
It is to be said that, when it comes to trust, Facebook has so far benefited from the fact that many users are quite misinformed and not aware of the fact that Instagram and WhatsApp are closely related to Facebook since they belong to the same owner. And this has resulted in the fact that, over the past few years, after the Cambridge Analytica affaire, daily views and the consequent advertising revenues have not decreased. (Majority of Americans Don’t Know That Facebook Owns Instagram)
Spoiler alert: the answer is yes, we can.
Going back to this post main topic, according to Mr. Z: <<Advertising is driving the future >>. And this is no surprise at all: adv accounts for 98% of Facebook revenues and so far, it has also maintained 45% operative margins. Impressive, I would say. Sustainable? The report entitled “Facebook doubles down on advertising” by Enders Analysis (EA) tries to answer this question.
Following the update of the app feed algorithms, the number of monthly and daily users has stabilized in saturated markets, while its increase has continued in other markets. At the same time, though, users’ engagement level – and the related impressions – on InstagramNews, Stories, Groups, Watch and IGTV have increased. Enders Analysis experts think this may be a confirmation of the fact that “changes made to Facebook products tend to benefit users and advertisers at the expenses of platforms developers and publishers”. To make a long story short, when it comes to advertisers in such scenario we need to consider two factors: Facebook runs an auction system which allows it to modify the market without informing advertisers; the partnership with PayPal means Facebook can now both push ho Marketplace for transactions and Instagram e-commerce, thus increasing advertising spaces. Moreover, Messenger, Instagram Direct Message and WhatsApp will soon be integrated with stories and are expected to contribute to the increase of views. Therefore, advertisers’ demand has not only increased everywhere, but is also bound to keep on growing bringing about a significant increase in Mark’s earnings!
What do you think about the new changes implemented by Zuckerberg into his social media? Tweet @agostinellialdo.
To find out more about the digital world, you may read my latest book entitled: “People Are Media”
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