Changing face of Facebook
FACEBOOK plays a more significant part in our lives than we probably realise. But many of us found that out the hard way earlier this month when there was a Facebook outage that lasted for more than a day. Not only was Facebook affected but its family of services was too. This included Facebook Messenger, Instagram and Whatsapp. I first realised this when I was trying to upload a video clip from a judo training session and just couldn’t upload the post on Facebook. I then tried to upload the same clip to Instagram and it wouldn’t work either.
I figured if I couldn’t share the video with the general public via Facebook or Instagram, I should at least share it with my teammates at the judo club, so I tried to share it via Whatsapp. That failed too. So did Facebook Messenger.
A quick check on the Internet revealed that this was a global problem and that netizens around the world were experiencing the same problem as I was. Facebook subsequently said the problem was a result of a shift in the setup of its computer servers. “We’re very sorry for the inconvenience and we appreciate everyone’s patience,” the company said.
That was the least of Facebook’ s problem. For the past year, it has been facing various probes around the world stemming from its relationship with Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy that had obtained the data of millions of Facebook members without their consent. The Cambridge Analytica case aside, Facebook is generally regarded as being poor at protecting its users’ privacy.
Then there was the Christchurch massacre where the gunman live-streamed his murderous rampage via Facebook Live. This sparked a backlash against Facebook, which did try its best to remove all clips of the video from its service. It also removed the shooter’s Facebook and Instagram accounts and took down mentions of praise or support for the shooting.
Although critics of Facebook have been quick to slam the social media giant for allowing the live-stream in the first place, there was very little Facebook could do to stop anyone from doing such things, short of abolishing live-streams. It can’t possibly predict ahead of time that someone would use its services to live-stream a horrific event. It can only take action after.
Some have called for live-streams to be delayed so that it’s possible to prevent such things from happening. But then it wouldn’t be a live-stream anymore, would it? It’d be a delayed broadcast. Even if Facebook were to abolish live-streams, there are still plenty of other platforms to live-stream events from.
Changes in the pipelines
That said, Facebook is actually in the process of moving away from what it’s best known for, which is a social network where people share with their friends, and usually with the public, content about themselves and what they’re doing. Instead, in the future, it will focus on private, ephemeral and encrypted communication. This is a huge evolutionary leap for a company that built its name — and fortune — on viral content sharing.
In a recent blog post lasting over 3000 words, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that encryption will be one of the keys to Facebook’s future. “As I think about the future of the Internet, I believe a privacy focused communications platform will become even more important than today’s open platforms,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Today we already see that private messaging, ephemeral stories, and small groups are by far the fastest growing areas of online communication.”
Public social networks have their place, Zuckerberg added, but he sees a large future opportunity built on a simpler platform that’s focused on privacy first. “I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won’t stick around forever. This is the future I hope we’ll help bring about.”
BETTER SECURITY
In the future, Facebook’s messaging platforms (which includes Facebook Messenger and Instagram Direct) will more closely resemble WhatsApp which has end-to-end encryption. That means even Facebook, the company, will not be able to read your messages.
In addition to making messaging more secure, Facebook also plans to make its messaging services interoperable. So, in the future, you should be able to send messages between Facebook services: WhatsApp, Instagram Direct and Facebook Messenger. All these will be interoperable with SMS too.
Facebook will also invest in making messages more ephemeral. Zuckerberg says the company will consider deleting messages by default after a month or a year, allowing the user to opt out if they wish.
Zuckerberg added that Facebook will not store sensitive data in countries with “weak records on human rights like privacy and freedom of expression.” The move would make it highly unlikely that Facebook would be able to make inroads into China but Zuckerberg is willing to accept that.
“Upholding this principle may mean that our services will get blocked in some countries, or that we won’t be able to enter others anytime soon,” Zuckerberg wrote. “That’s a trade-off we’re willing to make. We don’t believe storing people’s data in some countries is a secure enough foundation to build such important Internet infrastructure on.”
A natural question is how will this move away from public sharing to private messaging affect Facebook’s ability to make money since its current business model is heavily dependent on advertising.
Zuckerberg gives a hint in his posting where he explains that private, encrypted messaging tools will be opportunities to create new business tools. The services will eventually become “a platform for many other kinds of private services,” he wrote.
THE WECHAT MODEL
It’s likely to go down the WeChat route. Developed by the Internet giant Tencent in 2011, WeChat is China’s answer to Whatsapp. Unlike Whatsapp though, it has a mobile payments system built in (called WeChat Pay), which allows users to shop, play games, pay bills, book ride-sharing cars and even order meals.
WeChat gets a commission from each transaction. With slightly over a billion monthly active users (about 900 million of whom use WeChat Pay), this payments and e-commerce model allows WeChat to be hugely profitable without having to rely on ads.
Chinese citizens also use WeChat Pay to buy personal finance products. More than 100 million customers have purchased WeChat’s personal finance products, which includes everything from bonds and insurance to money market funds.
Will Facebook be able to achieve something similar on a global level? Hard to say. Right now, it doesn’t even have a payments system like WeChat so it would be building from scratch. And to offer financial products, it would probably have to acquire all kinds of financial permits and licenses in the countries it operates in.
Suffice to say, Zuckerberg is looking at the WeChat model. In fact, he has said he regrets not taking note of WeChat sooner. “If only I’d listened to your advice four years ago,” Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook in response to Jessica Lessin, founder of tech media The Information, who highlighted a March 2015 article she wrote that suggested Facebook should learn from WeChat.
Zuckerberg hasn’t mentioned a specific time frame for achieving his new vision for Facebook, beyond saying it’d take place “over the next few years.”