Mark Zuckerberg has a new remedy for what’s ailing Facebook: Ditch older users and refocus the company on serving Generation-Z, while encouraging them to buy virtual items in the emerging “metaverse”.

Source: Facebook’s new biz plan? Find young people in the metaverse

Facebook sees TikTok-like platforms as having a better strategy.

The basic design of TikTok – with short form videos seen via rapid scrolling through video thumbnails (which auto play as you encounter them) – favors attractive, fit, young people versus, say, content that requires a few seconds to think about. TikTok is about eye candy.

Facebook began with college youth and expanded outward from there but now sees a sharp decline in use by younger people. Older users are seen as less profitable (for any number of reasons), and even they may be cutting their use of Facebook.

Related: For the past 7 weeks, FB has presented me with few new posts each day. For several weeks I was seeing nearly the same, old, posts every day as if Friends were no long posting new content.

I checked Friend’s pages and found that they were posting less content, and more than half of my Friends had posted no content in more than a year. Second, “The Algorithm” optimizes posts from Friends with whom you interact. If you did not Comment, Like or Share your Friends posts, The Algorithm stops showing you posts from those Friends. Your Friends simply disappear from the News Feed.

Facebook has problems – big problems. Will turning FB into a youth-centric, eye-candy centric platform solve their problems?