Metta has been concerned for a long time. Losing teenagers and young adults Like competitors Tick tock And SnapchatEspecially since audiences are highly coveted by advertisers. Facebook, created by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 while at Harvard, was aimed at college students in its early years but has struggled in recent years. Aging user base.
Last year, 17 percent of Facebook users were between the ages of 18 and 24, while 44 percent were over 45, according to data.ai, an analytics company. In contrast, 28 percent of Instagram users were 18 to 24 and 33 percent were older than 45, while 39 percent of Snapchat and 30 percent of TikTok users were 18 to 24.
To appeal to younger users, Instagram and Facebook have in recent years Introduce features like stories., which emulates a Snapchat feature by allowing people to post photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours. they also Rollout railsa TikTok-like feature that lets people create short videos.
Last year, Instagram engineers were told that Meta wanted more people to post from Instagram to Facebook, said three people connected to the project, who were not authorized to speak publicly. That led to the new prompt, he said, which was designed so that most users would allow Instagram to permanently share their posts with Facebook. One of the people mentioned that the prompt was placed where thumbs normally land on the screen.
Meta declined to comment on what prompted the prompt and its design. But the company said not all Instagram users received it immediately and acknowledged that some had to decline multiple times before Instagram stopped asking. Meta also said that a software bug last year caused some users to see a prompt every time they post on Instagram.
“We know people enjoy cross-posting content on our apps to easily share with their friends and followers,” a spokesperson for Meta, which also owns WhatsApp and Messenger, said in a statement.
Tony Howe, who teaches product design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said tech companies have long encouraged customers to switch products and stick with their services. One example, he said, is pop-up windows that people click once to accept all Internet cookies, which collect their data and track them online. The second is how Amazon made it easy to buy items. Just one clickThey said.
