Facebook: is reinvention the need of the hour?

Abstract

Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook when he was studying at Harvard. 17 years after its launch, Facebook has become the world’s biggest social networking site with close to 2 Billion Daily Active Users and is regarded as one of the most valuable tech companies. The meteoric rise of Facebook was a result of heavy adoption by teenagers and young adults. However, in a recent trend, users in the 15-25 age group have been moving to alternate social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. Facebook has added several features and mini products to its platform to retain relevance such as marketplace, stories, integration of Insta/Facebook messenger but the crowd on Facebook has been more of adult age group of late 30s onwards. The teenagers who are more into engagement like sharing images, videos, stories. For them Instagram, Snapchat provides perfect platform to connect with people. Additionally, the amount of junk information, useless groups, advertisements has lowered the engagement of youth on Facebook. In this context, our objective is to study the reasons for the mass exodus away from Facebook and what changes can Facebook implement to reinvent itself and recapture the 15-25 age segment.