Welcome to Zuckapalooza. Now please update your FB app... Mark began Facebook's F8 developer conference with a preview/tour of the redesigned Facebook: aka "FB5" (it's rolling out to users starting today). Facebook Dating is also expanding to the US later this year and 14 more countries right now — Swipe right on any friend or indicate a friend-of-a-friend "Secret Crush."
Operation FB5-star is a Group team effort... Go look at Facebook's app in the App Store — it has about as many 1-star as 5-star ratings. It's polarizing. This redesign is intended to improve that by focusing on Groups:
- Better privacy: Worried those embarrassing freshmen year pics may go viral? Facebook's concerned, too. So it's emphasizing Groups and Messaging, which keep posts more contained.
- Admins = Policemen: It doesn't have enough humans or AI to stop extreme content from reaching innocent eyes. So it's de-emphasizing the newsfeed, and letting your Group's Admin take down bad stuff.
- Potentially worse isolation: Limiting chats to Group life means conspiracy theories, hate, and misinformation could potentially thrive even more.
This could hurt profits. It doesn't matter... It's not clear how this privacy focus will affect the Book's ad-tastic business model. But 18-29-year-olds are ditching Facebook fastest (usually for Insta, which Facebook also owns) because FB posting is too public. So it's disrupting itself with a more private version before a competitor does.