After the first week of Meta’s antitrust trial, new documents released by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) shed light on Meta’s ongoing challenges to maintain Facebook’s relevance. Emails from 2022 reveal that Meta executives were exploring various strategies to enhance Facebook’s appeal, recognizing a decline in its cultural significance.
Fast forward to 2025, and the company is still facing the same dilemma. In a Q4 earnings call in January, Mark Zuckerberg expressed the company’s intention to revive Facebook’s cultural relevance in 2025 by returning to its “original” format. A key component of their strategy includes the recent introduction of a redesigned Friends tab.
During the trial, communications from April 2022 highlighted Zuckerberg’s worries about Facebook’s Friends structure being outdated, especially as other major platforms shifted towards a “Following” model. He even contemplated eliminating the Friends format altogether and suggested that users might need to start anew with their Facebook friends.
