Mark Zuckerberg expressed his concerns about Facebook's cultural relevance in an email to Facebook executive Tom Alison in April 2022. This email was revealed in a court this week as evidence in the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) antitrust lawsuit against Meta. Zuckerberg noted that, despite stable user activity in many regions, he feels the platform's cultural relevance is rapidly declining, which he fears could be an early warning sign of future health issues for the company. He emphasized that even if Instagram and WhatsApp perform well, Meta's success would still be at risk if Facebook falters. In the email, Zuckerberg outlined several factors contributing to Facebook's declining cultural relevance and proposed potential solutions: 1. **Loss of Charm in the "Add Friend" Feature**: Zuckerberg observed that many users' friend lists have become stale, no longer encompassing the people they want to follow and interact with. The act of adding friends has become burdensome, and users prefer the more lightweight following mechanism on platforms like Instagram. To rejuvenate Facebook, he suggested a radical idea: clearing all users' friend connections and allowing them to rebuild their networks. 2. **Shift to Other Platforms**: Zuckerberg admitted that he himself is more likely to follow surfers or mixed martial artists on Instagram or Twitter. He believes that modern social networks focus more on following mechanisms rather than friend mechanisms, making Facebook appear outdated. To enhance user experience, Facebook needs to strengthen users' connections with content creators. 3. **Community Features Need Improvement**: Although Zuckerberg is optimistic about the community messaging function, he feels that Facebook's groups feature has reached a plateau and may not drive further user engagement. He noted that many community interactions are now moving to private messaging platforms, and it is unlikely that Facebook's groups will achieve the scale of its friend and follow systems. 4. **Short Video Features Lack Social and Unique Appeal**: While Facebook's Reels successfully showcase interesting content, Zuckerberg argued that if these videos are not created on the platform, they reduce the sense of social connection between users and content creators. Alison pointed out that Facebook's main issue is its lack of a culturally relevant public content ecosystem, with content from news and video publishers appearing too homogeneous. 5. **Numerous Competitors**: Zuckerberg highlighted the significant challenges posed by competitors such as TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, and Reddit. Notably, Instagram, which he aims to distinguish from Facebook, is performing well in terms of cultural relevance. He stressed the need for a strategic approach to ensure that Instagram and Facebook develop in different directions, rather than one service simply capitalizing on the leftovers of the other. Instagram's success in maintaining cultural relevance underscores the urgency for Facebook to find a long-term development path. Industry experts understand Zuckerberg's concerns, recognizing the increasingly competitive social network market and the rapid changes in user preferences. As one of the world's largest social technology companies, Meta faces substantial challenges and must continually adapt its strategies to align with market trends. These emails not only expose the internal worries of Meta's leadership but also provide crucial insights into the company's future direction. Meta, formerly known as Facebook, owns several prominent social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. In recent years, the company has been exploring new growth avenues, such as its metaverse project and ventures into the short video market. However, whether these new initiatives will reverse the decline in Facebook's cultural relevance remains to be seen.