How Facebook’s Thinking About Its War With TikTok

Social media has transformed, and Facebook along with it. Or at least it’s trying.

The Facebook survey looked bleak. Young adults told the company its main app was irrelevant, negative, and undifferentiated. They said it was for older people. And increasingly, they were right. The average Facebook user’s age jumped by more than five years between 2013 and 2021, opening the door for TikTok.

Now, as TikTok surges, Facebook is responding. The company’s accepted that some of its core app’s fundamentals are off. That sometimes, the most “social” interactions with “media” happen in private message threads, not feeds. And that content from friends and family, while intriguing, can pale in comparison to content suggested by AI. So Facebook is transforming itself to adapt.

“Relevance of content, or being irrelevant, or Facebook being cluttered, that’s really top of mind,” said Tom Alison, who runs the Facebook app, in an interview this week. He’ll have his work cut out for him.

Facebook came of age when discovery on the internet was limited. If you wanted to find something before Facebook, you’d generally search for it (or go to Yahoo). The company’s original innovation was to connect you with friends and family who’d share articles…