Digital Marketing Show Ep 2: The Future of Facebook

Welcome back to the newest show on our platform! Imogen Callister of realestate.com.au is joining us once again to discuss the future of Facebook. Or in particular, Mark Zuckerberg at F8.

F8 is an annual conference held by Facebook that’s intended for developers and entrepreneurs who build products and services around the website. Mark Zuckerberg took the stage and mentioned that the future of Facebook was private.

It’s been a rough year for the social media giant especially when it comes to privacy and security, so… his joke didn’t really mesh with the audience. However, he did promise the world that Facebook would protect their users and that privacy would be something that they would address.

Facebook is a community of apps. Within it, we have Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.

So Mark first discussed how the Facebook app is changing. In fact, you might have already seen it has changed. It's gone from that blue to more that white background, to the point that some people don't really notice the difference between it and Instagram.

Facebook will emerge to really focus around communities and groups. So, a lot of engagement will be easier to find in groups and communities on Facebook since that’s what their algorithm is going to prioritize.

The company is also going to boost their encryption and as we mentioned last time, focusing on in-the-moment content. So he knows that people aren't posting on his Facebook platform, because he's scared about what people are going to say or it'll come back to bite them in the bottom, you know, so he wants to reduce that impact and reduce the permanence of contact of content on that app.

So in-the-moment content is like your story. So if we look back years and years ago, Snapchat launched. And that really created this whole idea around in the moment content.  So this idea that content in itself should not be permanent or forever lasting. We've seen the rise in it now with Facebook, taking the followers of Snapchat and creating stories in Messenger and Instagram.

As for Instagram, the second largest app of Facebook, the one and only Insta. So, Mark Zuckerberg really talked here about reducing performance statistics, he believes that we don't post and that we don't do things because we're so preoccupied with how many likes that's going to get and how many followers we have on Instagram.

There are going to be two phases: the reduction of the impact of performance statistics and affecting the stats you see.  They’re trying to make it more friendly for, Imogen guesses, the everyday user.

Lastly, and the only thing that you really need to know about Instagram is to watch your spending.  Because you may be on the app, and you don't even realize that you are shopping, Imogen really does believe that is the future of Instagram, with Mark Zuckerberg trying to make shopping seamless with the app.

WhatsApp has actually already launched its business solutions.  Look, WhatsApp now has a following of around 7 million people. And it's really changed the way that people message.  Mark Zuckerberg also promised more towards creating a business solution for customers.