Under constant pressure, Facebook has no choice. His boss Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday promised a fundamental shift towards a more intimate and more privacy-conscious platform, a risky bet.
The central idea is to build a more unified platform between different services (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp), simpler, more ephemeral and giving primacy to private courier, as opposed to the traditional "news feed ".
This change in strategy, which will take years, must address the main problems of Facebook: on the one hand, the critics and incessant scandals around its management deemed at least opaque personal data of its users; and secondly, a change of habit of Internet users, who prefer more and more other modes of communication more intimate than the "thread of news" Facebook.
The bet is risky: less public modes of communication - Facebook even promises to encrypt all private messages - deprive the group of access to personal data, the basis of its business model. But faced with a slowdown in its growth, both financial and user, Facebook, which has just turned 15, is forced to improve its image and find new ways to grow and earn money. money.
The group with 2.3 billion users in the world seems to begin an inflection in its business model, which can not eternally rely on targeted advertising through personal data. It now also rely on electronic payments, messages exchanged with companies or e-commerce.
Equilibrism
"When I think about the future of the internet, I think that a communication platform focused on the + private + will become even more important than today's open platforms," he says in a long Exhibitor text, on his Facebook page, his new principles for the years to come.
"Today, we can already see that private messages, ephemeral + stories + (small text / video / photo montages) and small groups are by far the fastest growing online communication formats," notes the head of the company. company, which promises to make possible the exchange of private messages between Instagram Direct, Messenger and WhatsApp.
"In a few years, I expect future versions of Messenger and WhatsApp to become the main means of communication on the Facebook network," said the young multimillionaire.
He has worked desperately for months to convince of his good faith, after having promised many times to make amends. Promises regularly received with some skepticism by users, elected officials and regulators around the world.
Even "if we do not currently have a good reputation for our ability to build privacy services (...), we can evolve to build the services that people really want," says Mark Zuckerberg, wielding the art of understatement.
The group's former chief of security, Alex Stamos, summed up how the young boss was caught in a complicated dilemma, forcing him to a balancing act to try to reconcile sometimes contradictory principles while finding his interest.
"Right now, FB is rotten (by the same people) both because it violates people's privacy and because it does not control communications enough," he tweeted.
"In a world where everything is encrypted and does not last, lots of scandals remain invisible to the media", also wrote the one who had slammed the door of the group as a result of disagreements.
Recognized expert on "tech", journalist Walt Mossberg has quipped on Mark Zuckerberg's sincerity when he asserts the primacy of confidentiality. "How long did he personally believe it, an hour, a day," he said, wondering about Twitter.
Renowned for being very critical of internet giants, Scott Galloway, a professor at New York University, simply tweeted "Why do I feel like they're lying to me", with a link to Mark Zuckerberg's text? .
In a wave of almost uninterrupted polemics for more than two years (false information, hate content, manipulation of the platform for political purposes, personal data management, hacking ...), Facebook regularly ensures to have learned from its mistakes and not Stop promising better for the future.
The announcement of its strategic shift did not seem to impress investors: the stock closed up 0.73% on the stock market.