Move is the most visible signal of how the social media giant is starting to emphasise private communications.
Mark
Zuckerberg declared in March that he planned to shift Facebook away
from being a public town square and to private communications. Now,
the chief executive is rolling out the first in a series of changes
to achieve that.
On
Tuesday at its annual developer conference, Facebook
unveiled a redesign of its mobile app and desktop site. The revisions
add new features to promote group-based communications instead of
News Feed, where people publicly post a cascade of messages and
status updates.
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With
the changes, users can more easily message one another and share news
and other items with members of private groups on the site, the
company said. Zuckerberg is working to integrate and encrypt
Facebook’s different messaging services, which include WhatsApp and
Messenger. The company also plans to continue emphasising its Stories
product, which allows people to post updates that disappear after 24
hours. And it unveiled a spare, stark white look for Facebook, a
departure from the site’s largely blue-tinted design.
The
features, when combined, “will end up creating a more trustworthy
platform,” Zuckerberg said in an interview. “Everywhere you can
see and connect with friends, you’ll be able to see and connect
with groups; it’s going to be woven into the fabric of Facebook.”
The
redesign is the most tangible sign of how the privacy
scandals and user-data issues that have roiled Facebook are
forcing change at the company. The social network has spent the past
three years grappling with criticism that it did not properly protect
its users’ information, that it spread false news and other toxic
content and that it was used as a tool for election interference.
Last week, it said it expected to be fined up to $5 billion by the
Federal Trade Commission for privacy violations, in what would be a
record penalty against a technology company by the United States.
Facebook
is also playing catch-up with people’s shifting social media
behaviour. Questions about the benefits of social media and more
recognition of its ills have prompted many to turn toward methods of
private communications, such as messaging apps.
“By
far, the three fastest-growing areas of online communication are
private messaging, groups and Stories,” Zuckerberg said. “In
2019, we expect the amount of Stories that are shared to outnumber
the amount of Feed posts that are shared.”
Eventually,
he said, Facebook plans to roll out dozens of small product updates
across its four main apps of WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and
Facebook itself.
