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Facebook, as a platform, is barely recognizable from the social network that launched to connect Harvard University students in February 2004.
And looking ahead, the Facebook of five years from now is highly unlikely to resemble the product that 2.2 billion people use every month right now.
That’s no bad thing. If Facebook is to thrive over the next 5, 10, 15+ years, it’ll need to evolve.
Here’s where we think it’s heading…
Back in January, Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, outlined his vision for the future of Facebook on his Page:
What followed was an update that would prioritize posts from friends and family over public content from Pages in the News Feed.
And just a couple of weeks back, Facebook announced another significant update that could signal a new path for the platform — an update that only developers are likely to have picked up on so far.
On April 25, Facebook announced some API changes on its developer blog:
The `publish_actions` permission will be deprecated. This permission granted apps access to publish posts to Facebook as the logged in user. Apps created from today onwards will not have access to this permission. Apps created before today that have been previously approved to request `publish_actions` can continue to do so until August 1, 2018.
These changes mean that developers, and platforms like Buffer, will be unable to post content on behalf of personal Facebook profiles. This brings Facebook’s API in-line with Instagram’s, meaning developers can only post to business profiles and pages on both Facebook and Instagram.
For more information on how these API changes relate to the Buffer product, you read this full overview with all the details in the Buffer FAQ.
At Buffer, we believe it paints a pretty clear picture that Facebook wants individuals to be interacting with its products (Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp) and others on the networks in a manual, deliberate way — whether that is posting content, consuming content or engaging with content.
What this means for the Facebook ecosystem
Facebook seems very keen to encourage more users to share content and counter the decline of user-generated posts.
For example, its recent focus on Stories and Groups could be seen as a way to encourage more unique content. This, coupled with the “meaningful interactions” update, shows that Facebook might be hoping that more unique content shared by users, reaching more of their closest friends and family will help to spark more conversation and interaction on the platform.
In his January update, Zuckerberg shared:
The research shows that when we use social media to connect with people we care about, it can be good for our well-being. We can feel more connected and less lonely, and that correlates with…
