Inside Facebook's Plan To Fend Off TikTok — With Tom Alison

Tom Alison is the head of the Facebook app at Meta. He joins Big Technology Podcast for a discussion about the company's plan to compete with TikTok and appeal to younger users. Join us for a conversation about the Facebook product, one that veers into questions of its identity as a service that helps you keep in touch with friends and family while introducing you to content relevant to your interests. Stay tuned for the second half where we discuss Meta's plans to whether the bear and market and focus on its core while still experimenting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put Agentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then I sat down with Adam Mitchell, head of enterprise business solutions at Voya Financial, to go inside a large-scale Agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade-offs, and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today. It's never been more challenging to get frontier compute. How do you know where to look, who to trust, or how much to pay?

• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Akash is an open cloud that provides easy access, flexibility, and peace of mind. That's how companies like Razer were able to cut their inference cost by 15 times. Visit akash.network/alex for a free consultation. That's akash.network/alex for a free consultation.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  LinkedIn Presents.

• 1:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. We are joined today by Tom Alison. He is the head of Facebook. You might think Mark Zuckerberg is the head of Facebook. Nope, Tom Alison is the head of Facebook. And we have so much to talk about because the Facebook app, which is our subject for today, is really in an interesting moment. And, you know, there'll be no source, no lack of interesting information to talk about. So, Tom, welcome to the show.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  Alex, thank you for the exalted introduction. I'm super happy to be here, looking forward to spending some time today.

• 1:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Of course. You know, it's interesting that you're the head of Facebook, head of the Facebook app. It's a pretty storied position, I would say. What does it feel like to be running, basically, you know, the thing that?

• 2:09Speaker 03

  You know, effectively was the entire company up until, you know, well, I guess you guys did the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions, but, you know, Facebook, it was Facebook. So what does it feel like to be the head of that thing?

• 2:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's, well, first of all, it's a privilege and uh, it's also a little bit surreal, you know, I started at Facebook 12 years ago, I was an engineer and um, I found an opportunity to work on a lot of different products and areas within the company. And so the fact that I now get to to really work on kind of putting it all together, putting all these product lines together, of which many I worked on over the years is is truly an honor.

• 2:49Speaker 03

  We're going to talk a lot about Facebook's battle with TikTok. I think that'll be the main theme of this conversation. But I want I want to start with like a little bit of a weird question. So yesterday Elon Musk agrees to buy Twitter. Is that something that you pay attention to inside? Facebook, like what's your reaction? I mean, the fact that you're now gonna, you know, in the social networking world, social media world, you head to head with someone like Elon?

• 3:10Speaker 02

  I pay attention to it similar to how I pay attention to any trends kind of going on in the tech industry. So, you know, Twitter is one of many competitors we look at in the space. I would say, you know, I wouldn't say that we're kind of paying too close attention to anything kind of Elon specific, other than I think like anybody else in the tech industry, just kind of watching how that unfolds and how unpredictable it's been has been interesting to me as an individual. But no, we don't, we don't really treat Twitter any differently than we do kind of the broad ecosystem of kind of players in the space. So, um, you know, I tend to take a broad view of what's going on, what the trends are and not focus as quite as much on kind of individual companies.

• 3:52Speaker 03

  Okay. Were you surprised that he's gonna end up doing it?

• 3:55Speaker 02

  I've been surprised multiple times throughout this, throughout this journey. So I'm I'm almost like no longer surprised that I'm surprised, you know? I don't know, it's getting quite, quite meta, yeah.

• 4:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, even the fact that he's now agreeing, I'm like, okay, I've got to be careful, you know, people asking me, all right, is this gonna be the thing for real? I'm like, listen, even if it's a ninety percent, ninety eight percent chance that this is gonna happen, that two percent speaks pretty loudly. Okay, so why don't we get into the meat of this conversation? Um, right now, Facebook is um being challenged pretty dramatically by TikTok. Uh, people spend more time on TikTok than they ever have per day on Facebook. Um, there's real challenges with uh youth uh users on on Facebook.

• 4:36Speaker 03

  So why don't we start here? How big is the magnitude of the challenge from TikTok? And what is your plan to fend them off?

• 4:45Speaker 02

  That's a great question. So the way I describe what's going on is there's two big changes happening. I think TikTok is a part of it, but I don't view them as core to the story as when you kind of zoom out and look at two big trends that are going on. One is Gen Z, young adults, younger audiences, their social media use and the types of products that they want to use to connect with friends, family, communities is changing. They're just, they're gravitating towards different modes of sharing and expressing themselves. And I think anybody working in this space needs to contend and respond to that. And that's a big part of what's informing the direction that we're going.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  We've been looking at young adults and usage for a long time. That was one of the projects I was working on before I took on kind of leadership of the Facebook app. So that's something that we're looking at very closely. The other big trend is the power of AI and all of the innovation that's happening in the AI space right now. So I mean, we're, we're getting some very advanced sophisticated AI that's actually allowing us to personalize the Facebook experience across many, many different content types in ways that we haven't been able to do before. So I'd say really the confluence of those two things is informing our direction for the Facebook app.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  And if I had to really boil down what we're trying to do on Facebook, we always try to connect you with the people that you know and you care about. Friends and family is really our core. That's the thing that we are known for, and that's the thing that we will continue to invest in. We also help connect you with the people that you might want to know. So for example, over the last several years, we've had many people exploring and joining groups and actually getting to know people that maybe they don't know in real life, but that they want to know. And then I think the big interesting kind of frontier that we're investing in now is also connecting people with that you should know. So, you know, as I kind of, you know, I'm into

• 6:54Speaker 02

  cooking and I'm in some cooking groups. I chat with my friends and share with my, my cooking friends on Facebook and in messaging. But like, who are the folks in the cooking world right now that I should know? And I'm getting a lot of great recommendations now around creators and, you know, other folks doing cooking stuff that's bringing me closer to frankly, the cooking content and communities that I care about. So I, I view what we're doing as really kind of this extension and expansion of our frankly timeless charter of like really trying to bring people together.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  Right. And so I'll, I'll use, I think I'm going to end up using TikTok's name a lot more in this conversation than you are, which is totally fair.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  No, I'm game. I can say, I can say TikTok.

• 7:37Speaker 03

  Here, try it out, try it out. So, so that being said, let's, let's kind of focus on first what you mentioned, the first part, which is youth, and then we can focus on the AI recommendations, which is TikTok. So let me read you some stats from some Facebook internal documents. And I want to kind of get your reaction to them and, you know, hear your perspective on how you can address them. So this is from one where it talks about, about youth, let's see, yeah, youth users. And one, this one point that Facebook makes internal research that they fear broadcasting. So what do you think about that?

• 8:15Speaker 02

  That they fear broadcasting?

• 8:17Speaker 03

  They fear broadcasting.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  Well, I think, you know, we do a lot of research on youth and I think the answer there is nuanced. What we find with young adults, and when we talk about, when, when we talk about Facebook, a lot of our focus really is on young adults. And so that's ages 18 to 29. And we're looking very closely kind of on their attitudes and their, their use of Facebook. So actually, pretty universally, people still appreciate and value Facebook as the place to connect with pretty much anybody that you care about. So, young adults are still on Facebook, they can connect with their friends, they can connect with their relatives, and I would say that they still use broadcast sharing to share a lot of life

• 9:01Speaker 02

  moments. But I will say that we see a preference for, I would say, less permanent forms of broadcast sharing, which is why we've seen such a big uptake on stories, which we started kind of investing in several years ago. And so, we tend to see young adults gravitate more towards story sharing, which is still broadcast, but more ephemeral. And we see them actually over-index on sharing via messaging. So compared to an average thirty-plus person on Facebook, young adults are much more likely to be kind of using messaging or sharing over messaging. And so, I don't think it's like, hey, you know, this behavior has completely changed. But I think where my generation and a lot of the folks that

• 9:45Speaker 02

  maybe kind of were introduced to social media by Facebook, we're much more kind of accustomed to broadcast sharing. Whereas I think kind of young adults are saying, no, we prefer more of the ephemeral sharing, we prefer connecting over messaging. And that's where a lot of our product strategy and a lot of our investments are going, is to make that experience more kind of cohesive and integrated on Facebook.

• 10:07Speaker 03

  You know, and Facebook has had, you know, messaging, of course, this pivot to privacy that's been going on for years, has been all about taking some of the sharing going on broadcast in the feed and moving it to messaging. Also, stories has been around for a while. And even still, like, looking at the brand perception of Facebook, this is from your internal documents, about how young adults experience Facebook. So, they view it as large, older, and outdated network. They say it's irrelevant, and there's negative content, there's a lack of differentiated value, and they have a wide range of negative associations with Facebook, including, you know, privacy concerns. So, actually, I think maybe the first three are more relevant for this conversation. So, the fact that those

• 10:52Speaker 03

  product, you know, those products have been around, yet Facebook still continues to experience this gap with young adults, where is it not connected?

• 11:03Speaker 02

  There's a few kind of changes that we're making, I think, in response and maybe kind of revisiting some things and looking at them differently than we have in the past. I guess, first of all, this theme that comes up around the relevance of content or being irrelevant or Facebook being cluttered, that's really top of mind for myself and the folks inside the Facebook organization right now. One of the biggest areas that we're investing in is content relevance, is really doubling down on kind of AI so that we get people the best content, whether they're connected to it or whether they're not connected to it. And I'm sure we can talk a bunch about, you know, recommendations and how we think about

• 11:48Speaker 02

  connected versus unconnected content. But I think we have room to do a much better job at delivering a relevant personalized experience and bringing you content outside of your social graph via recommendations that is out there on Facebook but might not have been giving, getting delivered to you before. So I do think it's true that if you're a young adult on Facebook and you are just limited to the content being produced by your social graph, you're missing out on some content that's really important to you because you want to know what's going on kind of in culture and in community and you're exploring your interests. And I think historically, because we have not, you know, we've always been investing

• 12:29Speaker 02

  in kind of recommendations, but not as much in the kind of core of the home experience, we haven't been able to get people some of that content that I think was highly, highly relevant to them, but really not being kind of delivered because A, we didn't have the advanced AI to personalize it very well, and B, we were very much working in a paradigm of like, hey, Feed is mostly for connected content, whereas I think now we're kind of shifting gears and saying, no, you know, Feed and the home screen of Facebook can be a great blend of both connected content and recommended content. So that was a big kind of paradigm shift internally. But to solve the problem of relevance and bringing people relevant things that they care about, I think we really had to both open the window of what we were looking at

• 13:13Speaker 02

  and improve the delivery of it through these investments in AI.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  Right, and the connected content, just for definitions, that's from your friends and family and recommended content and groups, I guess.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  That's right. So people on Facebook typically will have, you know, hundreds of connections with friends. They'll be, you know, they'll have joined many groups as well. And so your whole content experience can be defined by who you've chosen to connect with or what pages you've liked or what groups you've joined. But in reality, there's billions of pieces of content being produced on Facebook that are public by super interesting people in public groups and communities as well. And so really unlocking that entire universe of the kind of creativity and community happening on Facebook and being able to deliver that to somebody in their feed at the right time, that's a big bet that I think we are putting way more energy into than we have in the past. And I think it's going to make the experience better,

• 14:11Speaker 02

  very much so for young adults, but also I think it's going to open up a lot of kind of opportunities more broadly for everybody that uses Facebook.

• 14:19Speaker 03

  You're going to say one more thing before I know what to do.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Well, you talked about this kind of notion of, um,

• 14:27Speaker 02

  I don't know, I guess the other, like, maybe around, around trust and, and things like that. And I do think the other thing that we've learned, I think this is particularly true of young adults, but this is also more broadly true, is that people want to have a sense of agency. They want to have a sense of like, hey, this experience is about me, not about what Facebook might want, but about what Tom wants or what Alex wants. And so actually, you know, tomorrow, we're going to be announcing, you know, a suite of new controls that we're investing in and we're testing in. And so we've invested a lot in Basically ways to have people be able to give feedback on the quality of the content

• 15:08Speaker 02

  that they see, whether it's connected content in feed or recommended content. So now we want to actually solicit people to tell us, do you want to see more of this? Do you want to see less of this? Do you want to see more content from your friends on Facebook? Or do you want to see more content from groups on Facebook? Because it's really kind of a partnership between us and the people that use Facebook in order to kind of build out the personalization required to make this a good experience. So giving people more controls and more ability to give us feedback on the types of content they're getting is a huge part of the strategy to make Facebook more relevant. And the more young adults give us feedback on what content is resonating with them and what content isn't, the more we're able to do a good job of actually personalizing the

• 15:53Speaker 02

  experience and showing them more relevant things.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  Okay, and you think that's going to help improve the trust gap by like getting people to be able to share what's resonating with them and what's not? Or is it just the relevance issue?

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think there's two, there's a few elements when it comes down to this. Some people, in fact, when we kind of bring them into, you know, a research study, or like I talked to a bunch of young adults and about how they use Facebook on a pretty regular basis, sometimes their concerns actually vector more towards, hey, I'm seeing this content in feed, but it doesn't seem relevant to me. Or I'm seeing this content, you know, in a notification, but it doesn't seem relevant to me. And in a sense, they're losing trust that Facebook was built for them because they're not seeing content that resonates with them. So a lot of these kind of like, I trust that Facebook is actually going to be valuable

• 16:51Speaker 02

  to me, comes from relevance. Now, there's a whole nother set of work around, hey, do I feel safe on Facebook? Do I feel like if I, you know, like comment on something, am I going to get? You know, harassed, or is that going to be a negative experience? That is another thing that we need to continue to solve and continue to invest in.

• 17:09Speaker 03

  Right. So I want to talk, yeah, yeah. That I think, I think the privacy, the, the, um, the trust and safety stuff is talked about to death. But let's, let's kind of jump in about, about, not that it's not important, but let's just jump in and talk a little bit about this. You know, idea of, of, um, you know, have people recommending stuff or, or, um, tuning their recommendations.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:29Speaker 03

  Um, before, before we dive in, um, you know, I think that, that you said, uh, you said, people feel like Facebook wasn't built for them. And that's interesting because it's kind of, Facebook has evolved over the past 20 years, uh, in, into, you know, into a completely different experience than it started with in the beginning, right? It was, you know, friends and family. Now you're throwing recommended content in there. Um, and it's less about like connecting with the people that you know on the internet and more about like what Facebook recommends. Now, like the question is, you know, it was the initial way that we would get content online through our friends, an accident of history. Meaning that like we had this moment where we built all these, you know, interesting social connections. Facebook was the place we did that.

• 18:13Speaker 03

  We thought, okay, it could be a fun place to also share links and photos and videos. But it seems like the internet has moved beyond that to this stage of recommendations via AI. And so I wonder how much risk there is for Facebook to just be sitting in the middle and sort of not, you know, have an identity at all because it's trying to get a little bit from column A and a little bit from column B. How much does that concern you?

• 18:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think about this a lot. Um, and maybe I'll kind of answer this in two parts. I do think when Facebook started, um, the concept of

• 18:50Speaker 02

  socializing or having the internet or an app as a social mediator was relatively new. A lot of people didn't have an online presence or a real identity for their online presence. And so I think like most things, when they kind of are internet enabled, we took a lot of what was existing in the real world and we figured out what's the best way to port it to the internet right now. Right? So I have my identity. I have my name. I have my picture. I can share content with friends. That was like a very clear, like, hey, this is a way I can take those real world, physical connections and stay up to date with them. What I've seen, or what we're seeing, is that that is still very important.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  Like I said, that is very much like what Facebook is about and something that we're always going to want to preserve. The way that this is going to happen is going to change. I think, you know, some people might be not posting their photos as much to feed, but they'll post it to a story, or they'll see a post by a friend and maybe instead of commenting on it, they'll start a messaging interaction with them. I do still think there is a huge need for ways to connect with the people that are your friends and that you care about through social media, and Facebook is always going to be kind of working on building solutions for that. But I think the other thing we've seen, and this was especially true during the pandemic,

• 20:12Speaker 02

  I think people are realizing that you can have relationships or develop relationships with people you don't know through the internet because of a combination of things. One is through higher fidelity, social media experiences. You know, I'm sure you have this experience through, you know, podcasting, where you listen to folks on a podcast and you really feel like, oh, I'm starting to get to know these people, I can relate to them, I can like actually feel like they're speaking to me in a way. I think we saw that with young adults during the pandemic and creators, where you have this highly visual and expressive, short-form video format and this very personality kind

• 20:54Speaker 02

  of driven, maybe somewhat more vulnerable way of creator sharing, and people felt like, wow, that person is really speaking to me. I still feel like that is relatively new, but it makes sense that you would still have a lot of social connections from the physical world that provide value for you on Facebook and other social media sites, and then you're going to increasingly develop kind of digital-first relationships with people. We see that with online communities, we see that with creators, and so... You know, the second part of my answer beyond, hey, I think it's natural to start developing more kind of online-first relationships as technology evolves. This is why also we're investing so much in the metaverse, because that's just the continuation

• 21:39Speaker 02

  of this trend. But stepping back from that, I think if you look at TikTok, a lot of people kind of zoom in and say, oh yeah, this is short-form video and this is recommendations. But I actually think you need to kind of zoom out and realize that the bigger kind of game or the bigger picture going on here is about social discovery. And so if I look at what TikTok is investing in, it's not just short-form video. In fact, they're asking me to connect with my Facebook friends. They're telling me TikTok is going to be a better place with friends. They're asking me to share stories. They're asking me to like, they're putting PYMK people you may know in my feed and asking me to follow them. And I don't think TikTok or ByteDance is dumb.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  I think they're doing this because they realize that the most interesting kind of discovery experiences are going to be a combination of algorithmic recommendations and socially mediated discovery. And I think where we're really vectoring on Facebook is how do we use those kind of recommendations or content from creator as a jumping off point so that you can then go discuss and share it with friends and you can go into the groups that you're a part of and share content there. And it's actually like this important flywheel that helps you kind of discover more about what you're interested in, but then be connected with the community that you care about, whether it's your friends or groups.

• 23:06Speaker 03

  Tom, what is vectoring? Can we use a different word?

• 23:09Speaker 02

  Vectoring? Did I use the word vectoring?

• 23:12Speaker 03

  Twice. What does that mean?

• 23:15Speaker 02

  Well, it's. What I mean by this is that. You're seeing a lot of companies. Try to. Get at this core idea from. Different angles.

• 23:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  And so I think. Really where they're going is how do we build a great? Social discovery system, one that can bring you closer to the things that are interesting to you. And through that, one that can also bring you closer to the people that you care about.

• 23:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  Now, this is actually why I'm quite optimistic about Facebook, because we've been doing this. For years, we've integrated different formats.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  You know, you, you have, you've built the, the, you know, a version of TikTok on your site. I, I mean, I, I think that this, this idea of connecting with people, you know, through these videos is, is nice in theory, but. You have the data in front of you. What percentage of people are actually creating these things versus consuming? Consuming them because. You know, I, from my understanding, it's like, I, I would imagine it's maybe five percent of people are creating and ninety five percent are consuming. So, well, in theory, it's like, yeah, let's create, let's follow our friends. We know, you know, if friend content was enough, then the newsfeed would be vibrant, it's not. So what's going on?

• 24:35Speaker 02

  So. The kind of public content creation, whether it's reels, video in general. Can be more head heavy in the sense that, yes, a smaller number of people. Are creating. Now, what we do find is it's more participatory, so we find that this is a video format, at least short form video, as opposed to some of the longer form video that we've. Invested in, that tends to be more participating, participatory, so the barrier to entry to creating is lower, people wanna. Try a new trend, there's ways to kind of. Have this feeling of social participation, you know, we've seen things like the add your stickers or ways to make it interactive.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  I agree that right now it's not as participatory as friend sharing, the participation rate in friend sharing is. Higher than, you know, creating a reel. But the thing that's quite interesting is there is a very, very clear and strong kind of resharing and conversations aspect to this. Like, there's a ton of reels that are reshared into Instagram Direct that are the launching point for tons of conversations with friends. We're seeing some of the same traction on Facebook. And I do think that part of what we're really trying to do is spark a conversation. And whether it's like, hey, is a post where somebody shares more valuable than a pretty

• 26:00Speaker 02

  in-depth discussion with a friend on a messaging thread? I'm not so sure that that kind of calculation kind of makes sense. I think people want to connect in a variety of ways.

• 26:10Speaker 03

  I was gonna ask you about passive consumption, so I feel like you're setting me up for this one. But Facebook has made a lot of comments about, you know, passive consumption, talking about how it's bad for mental health, just from a Facebook blog post. In general, when people spend a lot of time passively consuming information, reading but not interacting with people, they're feeling worse afterward. Here's Mark Zuckerberg. "Video done well can bring people together, but too often today, watching a video is just a passive experience." So, doesn't this, it does seem like you had this big push toward meaningful social interactions, which was trying to get people to talk to each other. Something about that, you know, it doesn't seem like something about that worked because

• 26:54Speaker 03

  you're, you know, now going through this big pivot again. And isn't the risk then that you end up creating so much more passive interaction? Because I, I'll say, like, you know, people who, I'm constantly getting reels, you know, in my inbox, no doubt about that. But is, you know, the experience of somebody on this product largely, you know, talking to people about it or passively consuming? My bet would be passive consumption.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  What I'm seeing is a little bit different than where we were in 2016 and 2017. In 2016, the video ecosystem and the passive consumption was mostly longer-form video. And in fact, what you saw was frankly, like, just financial incentives to make videos longer and longer and longer. Because the long-form video producers are essentially kind of monetizing via in-stream ads. And so, you know, you typically get three-minute-plus, 10-minute-plus videos. And as a result, what we've seen is that longer-form videos, while I think they still have an important place in the ecosystem, they tend to get, like, less likes, less comments, less shares, they're less participatory.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  As you make those videos shorter, we actually see the interaction rates increase, we see more commenting, we see more resharing. And also, I just think the kind of personality-driven creators' videos speak to people in a different way than I've seen in the past. I'll tell you the one thing that we always kind of struggled with, with MSI, in terms of kind of measuring it and understanding we were fulfilling its kind of core value proposition, was that we always knew that there was content that you might not explicitly interact with on Facebook, but you went off and you, like, talked to your partner about it, you know, that evening, or you mentioned it to your friends over dinner, or you saw

• 28:49Speaker 02

  an event on Facebook and you showed up there, you know, three weeks later. And so, there were very much, like, limits to, like, what we could kind of understand about how meaningful something was, or how meaningful of a social interaction that it was creating. So, of course, we looked at things like likes and comments and shares as a proxy for it, but we always looked at things like, are there surveys, are there other things that we can do to get at this? That's actually why I'm excited about, like, the work that we're doing on see more or see less, because it decouples your valuing of the content from whether you liked it or reacted to it, and it allows us, it allows you to tell us, like, I want to see more, I want to see less of this.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  So, oftentimes, I have content that I see on Facebook that I'll go and I'll, like, share with my wife in a conversation, and for whatever reason, I might not like it or I might not share it, but I'll tell Facebook I want to see more of it, and 100% that content is, like... Creating a meaningful social interaction for me, even if it's not explicitly captured by our system. So that's where like that user feedback comes in. And I think that's been a big kind of part of our journey as well.

• 30:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  How do we get more of that?

• 30:03Speaker 03

  It's pretty counterintuitive because all of the conventional wisdom today is just let the AI, you know, take as many signals as it can and optimize towards what people want. That's obviously what TikTok is doing today. So what in the testing has showed you that something like this is going to be better? What have you learned from your testing?

• 30:21Speaker 02

  What do you mean by something like this?

• 30:23Speaker 03

  Well, letting letting users gauge, you know, help gauge their feed, what they're going to see in their feed by giving Facebook signals, which are coming out today about, um, you know, what they want to see.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  Well, we're early on in it, but we typically see, you know, we look at a lot of ways to kind of measure whether these systems and the personalization that we apply is successful. So, you know, we look at certain things like, are people coming to Facebook more? Are they interacting more? Are they telling us via survey mechanisms that they find the content more relevant or that it's worth their time? And so we have a lot of ways to kind of triangulate. Are we delivering the experience that that people want? I would say that early on in some of our testing of this, we're seeing that, um, it is helping to deliver people more relevant content.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  Um, and it's actually helping them to reduce, uh, you know, content that they think is not really worth their time, whether it's lower quality, whether it's borderline content. We see that the see less signals correspond a lot to other kind of aspects of content quality that we've tried to get at in other ways. So, you know, I think it's still pretty early, but we're definitely seeing that this kind of.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  Feedback loop with people gives us a different dimension of the problem than we get through some of the other ways that we try to understand if content is relevant to you.

• 31:52Speaker 03

  Tim Allison is with us. He is the head of Facebook. We're talking to him about Facebook's recent innovations, trying to allow you to tune your feet a little bit more. On the other side of this break, we'll talk a little bit more about its battle with TikTok. We'll talk about the balance you have to make between trying to grow and taking shortcuts to make people spend more time with your app, and then maybe a little bit about the account and if Tom's willing to play ball on that front. So stick with us. We'll be back right after this.

• 32:20Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 34:24Speaker 03

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Tom Alison. He is the head of Facebook, no longer Mark Zuckerberg. Tom Alison is running it. It's fun to say. So let's talk, Tom, a little bit about sort of your theory in the first half. Let's talk about what it looks like in practice to users here and start to start the second. I understand everything you're saying and it all sounds good, but I think to most users, it just looks like, hey, Facebook is trying to have its old feed and then also like put TikTok on top of it and it's confusing. So is there something that leads you to believe that that's going to be a normal experience for people, you know, over time? Or do you think that there is a

• 35:07Speaker 03

  risk of, you know, the identity again and the experience of Facebook getting muddied?

• 35:13Speaker 02

  I would say that like, we haven't completely figured out the right way to integrate short form video. It's still a big kind of journey for us. And we've been evolving how we kind of show reels and stories at the top of feed. We're actually doing quite a lot more work on making sure that the in-feed experience is quite good as well. And it's kind of hard for us to tell because we're kind of early in this journey, what the right kind of way that people are gonna wanna interact with this is. Are they gonna wanna jump right into short-form video and right into reels and spend more of their time there? Or are they gonna wanna see this as part of a blended feed experience that also includes,

• 35:55Speaker 02

  you know, the best content from their friends, their group's content, other recommendations? I would say like, kind of what you're seeing right now is us in that kind of learning period where we're kind of working through what's the best way to integrate this format and make it feel like very much part of Facebook.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  So what is, what is Facebook supposed to be for people? I mean, you have this amazing line in this memo that you sent out, saying that a lot of times people just go to, go to Facebook, not quite sure.

• 36:24Speaker 03

  Oh, here we go. While people frequently open our app to connect with friends, family, and communities, they also open, often open our app without any explicit, or without an explicit intention.

• 36:37Speaker 03

  So what is Facebook supposed to be for people? You know, a directory, entertainment? I mean, having that north star, I think, is just sort of crucial, right?

• 36:46Speaker 02

  Facebook is ultimately about connection, and it's about connection with other people. I think that's why the friends and family piece has resonated for so long, because people do open the app to see what's going on with their friends and family. But I think what we've recognized for a long time at Facebook is, there's also this social curiosity that motivates people to open the app. We did a lot of research a few years ago, and, you know, we have this great research team, and they interviewed people all around the world, and they said, "Why do you use Facebook?", you know, and really trying to distill it down to its essence. And what that research came back with was that people use Facebook, the term that we

• 37:30Speaker 02

  ended up kind of aligning around to describe this was socially-powered possibility. Like, sometimes people know what they want, and they use Facebook to be very explicit about, like, "I wanna connect with my friends, I'm gonna open it to list something on Marketplace, I'm gonna go check in with a group that I really care about." But there's this broader thing of, like, people feel like, "Gosh, I'm gonna open the app." I know that there's millions or billions of people on Facebook. I know that there's a lot of different ways that I can explore my life and what I care about. And I wanna see what happens. I wanna see what Facebook and this huge set of people have for me. And what we find is that there are certain people that are really able to like activate this sense of possibility.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  There's people that create a community and it grows from 200 people to 200,000 people in a year. And they're like, oh my God, I never knew that this was possible. Or they become a seller on Marketplace. Or they find, you know, a relative that they had never, like, we see this activation of this social power, socially powered possibility in very different ways. But that's the essence of it, of really connecting with other people and of really understanding what kind of the possibilities in your life through the power of other people. A lot of it through keeping in touch with your friends and family. But I think for the longest time, we've shown that Facebook can expand beyond that, whether it's groups, whether it's pages, whether it's businesses that you can follow.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  So that's the essence of what we want and think people use Facebook for.

• 39:01Speaker 03

  Although there has, there has been some regret for moving too much into public content, which eventually led to this re-prioritization of friends and family.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I mean, what happened too in that phase is I do think that we, when you move that far into public content, especially that 2016 video content, again, the social dynamics were not there that are there in social, in short-form social video today. The creator kind of personality-driven, the connection.

• 39:34Speaker 03

  You don't think the personality-driven media was there in 2016?

• 39:38Speaker 02

  I think it was there, but not nearly as accessible as it is today and not nearly as widespread. And I think if you think about it, like, how many people could pick up the phone and like try to shoot a five-minute-long video that told an interesting story versus what people can do today where they have to shoot a 30-second video of doing a dance move or sharing a recipe? Like, it's a much, much more accessible and participatory form of video because the barrier to creating good content is much lower, both because of the creative tools as well as the like. It's a lot easier to film a thirty second video than it is a five minute one.

• 40:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, we were, you know, Vine, Vine had already lived and died, I think, before twenty sixteen, so.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true.

• 40:20Speaker 03

  Wasn't the first, first, but I think you're right, there has, there wasn't wide, widespread ability to do this stuff. And maybe there is some form of creative revolution, though I would love to hear a percentage in terms of creators versus consumers on the Reels product. Are you able to give that?

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Well, it's, it's pretty interesting because in, inside of Meadow, we look at kind of different creator segments. So, you know, we have folks that are aspiring creators, kind of low following, but they are posting publicly and they clearly have an intent to be a creator one day. And then obviously we have kind of superstar creators as well. So the spectrum is like pretty broad.

• 41:01Speaker 03

  Right, but you won't give a percentage of people who are creating versus consuming the one on Reels?

• 41:07Speaker 02

  No, I won't, but I will tell you that definitely people that have intent to be creators, whether they're kind of early stage or whether they're established, they do participate and create more reels than I would say the average person who's not trying to post publicly. But what I will say is that we actually see kind of these effects that creators and formats that invite participation do create a stronger halo of kind of participation. So a lot of it is both the, what is the content about? How much does it invite you in?

• 41:49Speaker 02

  How good of a job do we do providing creative tools that allow you to say, oh, that's cool, that person used this filter, I want to try using it too. Or that person used this music clip, I love that song, I'm going to do kind of a take on that. So I would say that like, yes, at present moment, um, you know, participation rate is much stronger for creators. But I've also watched stories, stories started at a very low creator participation. I remember in two thousand sixteen, people were writing like, oh, Facebook Stories is a ghost town. Nobody's using it. And then a year later, they were like, whoa, Facebook Stories is killing it. So some of this just takes time.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. Okay. Now, in terms of the way to get from here to there, um. You have a lot of room behind TikTok, so here's from I think a Wall Street Journal story. Instagram users cumulatively are spending seventeen point six million hours a day watching reels. That's less than one tenth of the one hundred ninety seven point eight million hours TikTok users spend each day on that platform thing. That's a lot of time.

• 42:50Speaker 03

  Facebook has been, you know, in its history known to put growth as the North Star on any performance review. Maybe that's changed a little bit. How do you, it, you know, it's kind of interesting for me because on one hand, you know, I'll criticize Facebook for being so growth obsessed, but also criticize Facebook for being so far behind TikTok. And so, you know, there's a little bit of, of, you know, being two minds about it. So, but I think the, the truth is that, you know, there should be ways to grow these products without taking shortcuts. So how do you do that?

• 43:24Speaker 02

  Well, a couple of things to unpack there. I can understand why people make the direct comparisons with TikTok and time, but I don't think it's the right comparison because again TikTok, at least right now, is a very video focused company. That's their primary objective. Now, if they succeed in stories and getting people to upload photos and with the kind of be real type thing that they just did.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're both.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  Their time spent per DAU is going to go down. It's going to go down. And, but here's the point is that like success for us is not video time. Success for us is having a relevant social experience. And so what my team cares about is not necessarily just growing time. It's actually like, hey, you know what might be the most relevant thing for somebody right now? A photo from their friend or a text post from their group. It doesn't take that much time to consume that, but that's fine because that's actually what people want and expect from Facebook. And that's actually why I think that our kind of investment and recommendations are going to really deliver because we're not just looking at video.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  We're looking at all types of different content and tendencies that people are going to care about. And our North Star is not time. It's like, hey, look, are people coming back to Facebook? On a daily basis and are they actually like finding things that they find highly relevant? And are they finding ways to connect with other people through it? And I don't, I think TikTok is, has a very different, probably topline goal in their organization than, than we have over here.

• 45:03Speaker 03

  So time spent is not how you're measuring your product managers working on this stuff?

• 45:07Speaker 02

  No, we look at it because, we look at it because I think if you do have kind of a video-based product, that's a component of what you look at. And so I look at how much time people are spending on reels and on video. But it's not how I evaluate the success of the Facebook organization. It's just one component of what we do, but it's balanced against a bunch of other product lines and product needs that we're trying to serve for people.

• 45:33Speaker 03

  This is good, this is good to hear. How involved is Mark Zuckerberg in the work that you guys do?

• 45:40Speaker 02

  He's, he's really involved.

• 45:42Speaker 03

  So he's not all on Metaverse? Because every, every five minutes, I feel like I read another story of this, these memes about Mark has stopped caring about Facebook.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  No, yeah, that is not the reality at all. I mean, Mark, as we were, we were really trying to unpack this idea of social discovery and in particular, the advancements in AI. And then how could that kind of show up in our products? So I'll, I'll tell you what kind of Mark does. Mark is very focused on tech, techno, technological innovation. So obviously he's spending a big part of his time in the Metaverse because there's a bunch of groundbreaking stuff happening there.

• 46:23Speaker 03

  More than half?

• 46:24Speaker 02

  Hmm, I, I couldn't tell you how he spends his time. I don't, I'd be the wrong person to ask, but where I spend time with him is he's been convening all of our AI experts across the company and saying, okay, well, what is state of the art right now? And then how far away are we from incorporating into our products? So we have deep dive sessions on like, here's state of the art AI. Here's where we are in terms of being able to use it to deliver better recommendations, better ads, better social experiences. Mark spends a lot of time there. We've also done many, many, like several multi-hour deep dives on Facebook and the strategy. Because the thing to remember is that while Mark is focusing a lot on innovation,

• 47:07Speaker 02

  he's got a rich history of understanding the Facebook app, of understanding social media. So he's really able to like point at. Technical concepts that are emerging and saying, well, what would happen if we did this here? What would happen if we changed the experience this and really pushing quite hard on that? And a lot of our focus on investing in AI and on kind of working towards building a better product for creators, all is directly downstream of of working with with Mark and him being being quite quite focused on this.

• 47:38Speaker 03

  Cool. All right. I'm going to begin Amsterdam next week with Joelle Pigna from who heads up.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, Joel's been awesome. She'll tell you about the sessions with Mark, sure.

• 47:47Speaker 03

  All right. Now I have a question to ask, and that'll probably be on the podcast feed. I'm working with World Summit AI. If you're out in Amsterdam, shout out because it'll be a fun week. Okay, a couple more questions for you. First of all, in terms of economy right now, Facebook is definitely buckling down on expenses. There's hiring freezes. I think the Wall Street Journal has reported that you're trying to do 10% cost reductions. You know, there's other there's reported insiders saying that there's quiet layoffs. Maybe 15% of the company's workforce, you know, impacted there. I want to ask you to comment on on that part, but I want to ask you to comment on the fundamental thing, which is that, you know, it looks like a lot of Facebook's attention is going towards Metaverse stuff.

• 48:32Speaker 03

  Facebook is the name of what the company used to be called, not what it is called. So how does how does Facebook balance this need for efficiency without leaving behind, you know, some of the core products that make the company what it is?

• 48:45Speaker 02

  I'd say the big theme inside the company right now, regardless of what division you work in, is focus and prioritization. And I think that's like super healthy. I'm I'm been pushing this with my team in the Facebook organization for a long time. It's no secret that Facebook has tried building lots of different features and kind of gone into, you know, trying a lot of areas, but. We've really been trying to establish a culture of just very clear kind of prioritization on a smaller set of things. And for what it's worth, that's been the mentality that's made Facebook successful for so many years. We were, you know, many times operating from

• 49:29Speaker 02

  a position of being challenged by a competitor or being the underdog. And we really did our best work when we were kind of very, very focused, kind of ruthless prioritization. And what you're seeing outside of the company that's happening inside of the company is going back to that like kind of very focused, very kind of ruthless prioritization. And it's happening everywhere. Because I think, I think honestly, the companies that are going to survive and thrive through what is going to be a really difficult period for everybody are going to be the companies that that do this well. And so I'm heartened because I I've seen us do this as a company in the past, and I see us really doing this

• 50:10Speaker 02

  right now. And so, um, yeah, and in terms of the focus and the resources on Facebook, I do not feel at a loss for having what I need to do my job, or my teams having what they need to do their jobs.

• 50:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, um, the interesting thing, when you have focus, you can also have like experimental projects that sort of, well, by the way, we know this week Bulletin, which is Facebook's newsletter product, is toast. Um, there's there, there's a concern, I think, that if you don't sort of keep funding these experimental products, you might end up being lapped by a competitor. So, um, how do you feel about that?

• 50:47Speaker 02

  It's certainly something that we keep top of mind. And I would say that we still have, you know, a lot of early stage products. So you mentioned Bulletin, and I think really we're trying to invest a lot in creators in general. And so we try things with certain Pockets of creators and we see and we learn and then we're still very invested in creators all in. And we have a lot of emerging bets for creators. We have stars, which is kind of our user tipping. We have, we're working on things like overlay ads, subscriptions, other tools for them. So in a space that's very dynamic and very changing, we know that we can't just have one bet, but we also can't have 20 bets.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  And so I think we're really trying to focus, you know, in areas of fast innovation. Okay, let's focus on two or three things, but not eight or nine things right now. So it's definitely top of mind for me, but I think we're getting the right balance.

• 51:43Speaker 03

  Facebook has also, speaking of bulletin, news related stuff, Facebook's pulled back on news and the news feed in a big way. How's that going for you guys?

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Well, you know, we invested in news and I think that we're continuing, but it's, it's always been less of a, less of a part of the Facebook experience than I think people from the outside think that it is. I think last time I looked, I think it was something like less than 6% of news feed or, or something of that nature. And so, you know, we're really trying to invest more where we see kind of more demands for expression, more opportunities for giving people what they want on Facebook. And honestly, people are, when I do, when we do research, they're not saying, hey, we want more news on Facebook. They want more creator content, they want more interest driven content.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  And so we kind of basically form our investments based on where we see people, what we see people wanting from Facebook. And so that's why we're investing more in creators. And I think some of those creators are going to be very like interesting kind of public voices that do more, maybe, you know, commentary and things. That's, we, we learned a lot from, from bulletin and I think we still have relationships with a lot of those people. We're just working through different product mixes and solutions for them.

• 52:59Speaker 03

  Okay, I want to end on this. Um, there is this popular TikTok of this guy who's walking in the street talking about how we've lost our third places in, in US, maybe globally. Um, and a third place is a place where people hang out that's not home or work. You know, places like, um, you know, community centers and barber shop. Um, you know, that place you get together. And that does, that happens less and less, especially as we're in cars and we're at home, there's a work from home. You know, some might see Facebook as filling that area of that third place. And they might see that it's good or bad. So do you think Facebook is a substitution for that third place? Or and and if it is, is that a positive thing for our society?

• 53:43Speaker 03

  Like, what role do you see Facebook playing in this?

• 53:47Speaker 02

  I don't think it is yet.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  I I'll say that at least what we have on Facebook right now is that I think it's a. It's a great place to.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  At least when I think about the community aspect, we have a great groups product. We have great community products. Most of our groups right now are really large, you know, like twenty thousand, fifty thousand, two million people. It allows people to share and express a lot of cool kind of interest based content. It allows people to find support groups for things that they can't. Find in their communities physically. So there's a lot there, but like in terms of that place where you really like feel connected to more people. I think we still have work to do there. I think, you know, we're trying to do more around things like community messaging. How can one of these fifty thousand person communities?

• 54:42Speaker 02

  How can they drop into a space with fifty people or twenty people and have a more intimate conversation? How could they start a video chat there? Eventually, how can they go into a metaverse environment from there? So I would say like, no, I don't think Facebook is the third place right now. Are there ways that I think we could maybe get to being there more credibly? Um, yes, I do. And I think that's always going to be kind of aligned with our mission is to like, give people more ways to connect with other people. But I think we got a lot of work to do to really kind of make that feel.

• 55:14Speaker 02

  You know, more more intimate, which is why we're investing in things like messaging. It's why we're investing in things like calling. It's why we're investing in the metaverse. But I think we have a ways to go to take what we're seeing in terms of this new technology that's coming out. And truly kind of build it around people. But that's what we've always been trying to do as kind of the core of what our company provides. So I'm pretty optimistic.

• 55:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, do you have a third place you like to go to?

• 55:44Speaker 02

  I, you know, I like to go and kind of my guess, I don't know if this counts as a third place, but um, I, I like going out and kind of with other people that like work out or like exercise. I feel like, I feel like

• 55:56Speaker 03

  The gym counts, the gym counts.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  I feel like gyms have become almost like this new place. It's like, and so yeah, that's kind of my scene when I need to just get out of my headspace on work or whatever, go to the gym, just kind of grind it out with other people. That to me is like pretty, pretty fulfilling and cool.

• 56:13Speaker 03

  Tom Alison, thank you so much for joining. Great talking with you.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, great talking with you too, Alex. Thank you.

• 56:17Speaker 03

  Okay, thank you. Thank you, Tom, for joining. Thank you, Nate Guatney, for handling the audio on a quick turnaround. Thank to all, thank you to LinkedIn for having me as part of the podcast network. And thanks to all of you listeners. We'll be back next week for another episode of Big Technology Podcast. Ron Janroy is coming to talk to us about the economy and about Elon Musk, you know, potentially owning Twitter. Who knows what will happen between now and then. So that will do it for us here on the show. We'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.