Facebook Published a Blog Post to Let You Know It’s Not Dead

Facebook is doing just fine, says Facebook. Tom Alison, who is the head of the Facebook app, published a blog post this week to let people know that “contrary to reports otherwise, Facebook is not dead nor dying, but in fact alive and thriving with 2 billion daily active users.” 

As for those reports, I’m sure it’s rough to read about how Facebook’s revenue is declining, or that the company is laying off more than 10,000 employees (with more reportedly to come), or that younger people just aren’t interested in Facebook. I imagine if you work for Facebook, you want people to know that the thing you’re making is still relevant and growing.

Still, I feel that if you’re trying to convince people you’re not dead, it’s probably too late. They’ve already made up their mind. 

The blog post is actually a great example of the reason why. In it, Alison talks about how the company’s focus this year is on “artificial intelligence, messaging, creators, and monetization.” All of that is fine, but it seems pretty obvious that the company is so focused on trying to beat TikTok that it has no idea why anyone still uses Facebook. 

Take, for example, the fact that the company is bringing your Facebook messages back into the Facebook app. For the past nine years, you had to have a separate Messenger app to access those messages on your mobile device. Why? Because, for a while, Facebook was convinced that it needed to be a messaging service and the only way to do that was to force users to download a standalone app. Of course, in-app direct messaging is a feature of TikTok, so it’s time to bring that back to Facebook.

Then there’s the focus on artificial intelligence. Really, Facebook is just talking about how it uses an algorithm to show you content it thinks you’ll be interested in so that you’ll keep using Facebook and it can keep showing you ads. 

Remember when Facebook was an app you used to connect with and share things with your friends? Not anymore. Facebook is an app that serves up content that it thinks you want to see, even if it was shared by someone you don’t know. That’s fine, but there’s already an app for that. Again, it’s called TikTok. 

Finally, Alison talks about “creators and monetization,” which again is not really why people use Facebook. It’s great that the company is trying to create tools for people who want to make money on its platform, but it’s hard not to see it as another attempt to keep people from leaving for, well, TikTok.

Facebook is like the indecisive friend you knew in college who kept changing their major because they couldn’t decide what they wanted to be when they grew up and ended up spending seven years on a four-year degree and still never graduated. They tried a lot of things but ended up with a lot of student loans and little to show for it.

In Facebook’s case, the company has had a rough couple of years, but it’s still growing and it’s still profitable. It just hasn’t figured out what it wants to be when it grows up. The problem is, it’s already all grown up. If it hasn’t figured it out by now, it probably never will. That may not mean it’s “dead or dying,” but it certainly doesn’t sound like a platform that’s “thriving.”