Look, every company goes through a lifecycle; tech companies go through them faster.
But I’m in my mid 30’s and will probably use Facebook (very casually) for life.
I’ve bought multiple products from their ads; they’ve got my profile zero’ed in, and that suits me perfectly.
Every week I go on it for 5 minutes, see my friends’ baby pictures and a handful of products that are perfect for me. That’s much better than most sites.
As to recruiting 20-somethings, I’m not convinced that’s crucial to any established business, and even if it were - there are tons of boring businesses that hire smart 20-somethings every day.
That's the thing, your "friends’ baby pictures" still being posted to FB is an US insularity thing, we used to do the same here in Eastern Europe until, I can't tell, 5 to 7 years ago but at some point that sharing of family photos on FB has just stopped.
As with other things internet related (see WhatsApp about 7-8 years ago, TikTok now), the US still seems to live in the past and isn't up to date with the newest stuff. As per WhatsApp, Facebook (the company) was lucky enough to be able to buy it back in the day (and, even then, lots of US users on this forum had never heard of it, which goes to show that insularity that I've mentioned), but with TikTok they don't have that option available for them anymore.
It has been mentioned here in the past several times, but many US-based people on this forum should take a step back, look at the outside world, and realise that, in many respects, they've been out-manoeuvred by said outside world when it comes to the internet. And I'm not talking about places like China, which is head and shoulders above the US when it comes to all things digital, but I'd be willing to bet that nowadays many people in Subsaharan Africa (several orders of magnitude poorer than the US) carry out more of their day to day tasks via their mobile phones and the internet compared to the people in the US.
What big US tech companies got going for them is a captive market (I don't think that the powers that be in DC will let any new TikTok-like non-American company to happen again) and, more importantly, lots and lots of money, both in their coffers/investors' pockets and, just as important, in their clients' pockets. But they don't have the edge anymore when it comes to innovation and to being relevant to people's lives (again, outside the US and some related markets).
I think you're letting your weird anti-Americanism colour (color?) your thoughts.
For instance:
- I'm not American
- Americans don't need Whatsapp because almost all of them have enough money to just buy iPhones
- Africans indeed do perform many tasks on their phones now, a phenomenon called leapfrogging. It's a big boon for them. I don't really get why you think that is better than the setup in the USA though. Africans are looking up agricultural market prices and paying one another by text; Americans have a totally different technological setup and get a far more efficient solution with futures markets for farmers and Costco / Walmart for consumers.
- America has new tech inventions and new big internet businesses coming out of its ears; not sure how you think they've fallen behind somehow.
- None of this is pertinent to Meta's long-term success; you can build a trillion-dollar business that will last for decades to come just based on American baby boomers bragging about their grandkids
But I’m in my mid 30’s and will probably use Facebook (very casually) for life.
I’ve bought multiple products from their ads; they’ve got my profile zero’ed in, and that suits me perfectly.
Every week I go on it for 5 minutes, see my friends’ baby pictures and a handful of products that are perfect for me. That’s much better than most sites.
As to recruiting 20-somethings, I’m not convinced that’s crucial to any established business, and even if it were - there are tons of boring businesses that hire smart 20-somethings every day.