[adim86]

I think Facebook is bleeding college age people to Instagram (yes I know it is owned by FB), snapchat and the likes and this is serious ad revenue, if allowed to continue all spells the death of a platform. Form me this is a signal of fear or desperation to save the website facebook. Facebook the company is VERY fine and healthy, but I think Facebook the website is in trouble

[nerevarthelame]

The release of this certainly means that they don't think that they're reaching as many college students as they could, which might be framed desperation, given FB's origins. But I personally think that's an overly pessimistic interpretation. I'm not sure what signs would point to the Facebook platform as a whole approaching "death." Their number of active users (for just Facebook, not Instagram or anything else) have been consistently growing each quarter - even specifically in the US.

[graham_paul]

It doesn't matter that you are getting more users if those users are old and that's basically what is happening to Facebook. FB these days is just a place where content gets recycled, original content, viral memes and cultural trends happen elsewhere (TT, IG, etc). Just try to list the number of public figures (that young people care about) that use FB as its main channel? Now compare that against TT, IG, etc.

FB managed to buy IG and WhatsApp but they won't always be able to buy their competitor or copy them

[ffggvv]

why does it not matter if they are old?

i could see the argument that they spend less money than other demographics but not that it doesnt matter

[graham_paul]

because the youth is the future. Investing in young users is investing long-term. Young users is potential future money, old users is immediate but short lived money stream. I didn't mean to say that it didn't matter but FB is obviously looking at the future

[ghaff]

I wonder what engagement on Facebook looks like overall. Anecdotally, I haven't seen many in my (older) circle "rage quitting" Facebook but I've seen a lot of people going from using it pretty regularly to using it rarely or to a first approximation of never.

[awad]

Despite their best efforts to do so, I would argue that most people don't know that FB owns Instagram or WhatsApp. For college-aged people, IG, TikTok, and Snap are what they live in.

[puranjay]

These people are never going to come back to Facebook. No one moves to last generation's social network.

The lifespan of any social network is effectively only one generation long. Which is long enough to make a lot of money, but not long enough to build a business that lasts a lifetime.