Facebook’s Plans A Product Roadmap

Mark Zuckerberg presented Facebook’s plans and product roadmap for 2019. Here’s everything we need to know.

Facebook shared its revenue and growth stats for Q4 2018. Mark Zuckerberg also shared a post discussing the product roadmap and their plans for 2019.

It has been a turbulent year for Facebook but all the negative publicity didn’t seem to affect its user and revenue growth. According to Zuckerberg, the company saw a revenue of $16.91 billion in Q4 2018, up from $13.7 billion in Q3 2018.

Moreover, Facebook counted 1.52 billion daily active users in December 2018, which is an increase of 9% from 2017.

When it comes to monthly active users, there are now 2.32 billion as of December 2018. The increase proves that people are still using Facebook, despite all the controversy from earlier this year.

Another interesting statistic is that 93% of the advertising revenue comes from mobile devices, up from 89% in Q4 2017. This means that mobile users should be more important than ever in our advertising strategies.

Overview of key stats we need to know as we plan our Facebook marketing strategy for 2019:

  • 1.52 billion use Facebook daily
  • 2.32 billion use Facebook monthly
  • 93% of the advertising revenue comes from mobile
  • 2.7 billion people use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger each month (Facebook’s “Family” of services)
  • 500 million people use Instagram Stories daily
  • 2 million advertisers are now focusing on Stories

Zuckerberg also shared the company’s plans for 2019 and their priorities for the new year.

As he mentioned, “We’ve fundamentally changed how we run our company to focus on the biggest social issues, and we’re investing more to build new and inspiring ways for people to connect.”

Facebook focused on security in 2018 and 2019 will be the year of product innovation. This sounds like an exciting promise.

Here are Facebook’s four key priorities for 2019

1. Making progress on social issues

The first priority is about improving the way the internet and their company handles major social issues. It’s key to proactively identify harmful content and they have already improved their systems for this work.

Mark Zuckerberg said that he’s proud of having one of the most advanced systems in the world and that they have more than 30,000 people working on safety and security.

The bigger question he raised for this case has to do with the set of values. How can you decide what’s acceptable and what is not?

Facebook has reduced engagement in WhatsApp to stop misinformation. They have also reduced viral videos by 50 million hours a day to improve well-being.

Moreover, they are also working on privacy and encryption. They are confident that they’ve built one of the most powerful encrypted messaging services in the world.

As people need additional privacy, Facebook is working on making more of their products end-to-end encrypted by default to improve the safety and security of their users.

2. Building new and meaningful experiences while gearing up for bigger improvements

Facebook wants to deliver new experiences that can meaningfully improve people’s lives. Mark Zuckerberg talked about Stories and how they keep on growing as an emerging content type.

Instagram has actually passed 500 million daily active Stories users just 6 months after reaching 400 million daily active users.

Now the focus is to improve such experiences over the next months:

  • Messaging will become the center of the social experience if it’s not already. That’s why WhatsApp will allow payments through the app in more countries.
  • Private sharing and stories will also become more important to the social experience as people focus on privacy.
  • More businesses are going to be on boarded to be part of this social experience while finding new ways to reach their audience
  • Facebook Groups and communities will continue to deepen. Community is a central part of the experience on Facebook and Groups will soon be as important as friends and family for people.
  • Facebook Watch will become even more mainstream. 400 million people currently use it every month and it seems that people spend more than 20 minutes every day on Watch daily. Thus, Facebook is looking for New Years to grow this feature beyond the news feed to separate the entertainment from the social interactions.
  • Instagram will focus more on commerce and shopping. Mark Zuckerberg has promised that they will deliver more quality experiences around these.
  • AR and VR will bring people together in the longer term. Oculus Quest shipping will begin this spring while Portal also goes surprisingly well.

3. Supporting business to grow

There are currently more than 90 million small businesses using Facebook’s products. Most of them rely on free products and according to a survey from Facebook, they have managed to grow their business and hire more people ever since they’ve started using Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg said that they are happy to see that they are helping such businesses grow and they are committed to continue doing it.

4. Improving transparency on their work and role they play in the world

The last priority for this year for Facebook is to communicate more clearly what they’re doing and the role their services play in the world.

As Mark Zuckerberg mentioned, there’s a lot of negativity out the impact of technology. The tech industry should be scrutinized heavily due to the big role they play in people’s lives. However, it’s important to listen to the critique first and then to figure out the best way to address these issues while staying true to your own beliefs.

2018 has helped Facebook get a clearer sense of their beliefs and they seem to be ready to move forward. They are also ready to work with people seek for better outcomes, either with content or data regulation, cooperation on shared threats, using AI to serve people or supporting the idea of living in an open and connected world.

What do Facebook’s plans mean for our 2019 strategies?

It’s always useful to know what big social companies like Facebook and its family are planning ahead. If you’re working with brands in marketing, advertising, or sales then you understand that these trends may also affect your own work.

Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and the rest play a big role in our lives and it’s important to keep up with their latest changes to adapt our own strategies.

What we can learn from Facebook’s new priorities is that the ‘Facebook family’ has lots of different plans ahead. What we need to remember is that Facebook is not just one platform anymore.

Even if your audience is steadily leaving this platform, they will probably still be on Instagram or WhatsApp, which means that it’s useful to keep up with their integrations and their upcoming plans.

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