Ali White, Associate Director & Head of Business Development:

• Facebook’s 20th birthday is the perfect time to reflect on its impact on society 
• Facebook is still the biggest bear in the social media pit
• What will the next 20 years bring? Can they do it twice with the Metaverse?

At the risk of both stating the obvious and re-treading old ground that has been analysed to death in articles, podcasts, Hollywood films and major international legal probes (!); Facebook has changed a lot in its 20-year lifetime. 

2024 marks the 20^th anniversary of the world’s first ever “social network”, a platform which started as digital version of a class yearbook at Harvard University, and has gone on to spawn a billion dollar industry while impacting everything from politics to commerce to global lexicon.

Through all these changes, the marketing industry (often the gatekeepers of a Facebook presence for brands) has had many circular conversations about whether or not Facebook is still relevant:  Does it still appeal to people? Is anyone still using it? If they are, why is engagement going down?  What are the demographics of Facebook users today? Is anything converting?

And while the answers to those questions still predictably depend on things like strategy / audiences / messaging / objectives for what is being marketed, keeping up with what and how the global tech giant is changing things has generated a significant industry all of its own.

At the core of Facebook’s impact on society is its data strategy. Facebook gave way to Meta in 2021,   which earlier this year reported more than $40bn in advertising revenue in the last quarter for 2023 alone. It has been able to generate this revenue due to holding on to its position as the biggest social network to ever exist. A declared 3.03 billion users at last count, which in perspective is more than the population of India (1.4 billion), China (1.4 billion), and Bangladesh (173 million) combined.

So, despite the tireless conversations about relevancy, Facebook remains the access point to the biggest segment of the global population of any platform out there today (and, for the first time in 2024, to a larger section of 65+ than 13-17 year olds). Or to put it another way as far as advertisers are concerned,  more people in one (online) place than tuned into both Royal Weddings or the Taylor Swift / Travis Kelce Super Bowl.

As well as being the first, and the biggest, social network to ever exist, the impact Facebook has been able to have is also due to its redefinition of the flow of communication between brands, companies and individuals. Twenty years ago, the only way to engage in direct two-way conversation with a brand representative would have been to physically enter a shop, or to contact a customer service centre by email or phone.

Today, the expectation from consumers is not only are we able to engage in instant conversation with someone who works at a brand, but also that they win the battle for our attention and earn clout and maintain relevance, by being able to join in with and even direct public discourse. We demand that brands know what’s relevant, what’s trending, what’s viral, and that they will respond well and immediately to accusations of everything from negative customer experiences, to cringe and outdated community management, to criminally and morally bad business practice.

Facebook has been the architect of a system where marketers and advertisers assume so much about their customers; demographics, psychographics and behaviours are the just the tip of the iceberg. And customers expect a level of availability and two-way communication from brand representatives that has never been known before. So, what began as a simple digital yearbook tool (and before that a female classmate attractiveness voting scale straight out of a creepy Weird Science / Mean Girls cross over event no one asked for), has changed the face of society and communication significantly in its 20 years of life. But the question now is, with the Metaverse persistently pushing itself into existence despite seemingly limited interest, uptake, will it be able to do it twice?