I have a friend who teaches high school Spanish here in the Twin Cities. She’s my lifeline to what the cool kids are up to these days. Earlier this year, she told me Facebook is so over – it’s all Twitter and Snapchat. When I asked her why, she said it’s because “old people are on Facebook.” Of course this made me laugh because even as someone who got in on the ground floor of Facebook over 10 years ago when I was young, I – with my many posts of dog, cat and baby – surely qualify as one of these “old people.”
Although Facebook has yet to acknowledge that there’s been a mass exodus of teens to other, trendier social media sites, Ryan Tate’s February 13 article for Wired, titled “4 Things Facebook Should Do to Win Back Teens,” offers some suggestions for how Facebook can keep its offerings fresh for a young audience. As I was reading, I thought to myself that what teens might want out of Facebook perhaps isn’t so different from what teens want out of companies and brands they engage with. After all, what isn’t social these days?
Build new brands
To re-capture younger users, Facebook needs to create all sorts of new apps under new brand names. The company will have to walk a fine line in how it integrates these networks with Facebook proper — should same credentials work on both services? will universal logins scare off teens? — but the benefits of building independent environments outweigh the headaches. By better engaging with teen users, Facebook can offer younger eyeballs to Madison Avenue in the short term and nudge teens toward its flagship product as they get older.
Keep parents away
Whether online or in the real world, teens don’t want to hang out near their parents. Indeed, what makes teenagers act like teenagers is that they’re trying to create an independent identity distinct from those who raised them. Facebook must find a way of giving teens their own space without appearing to exploit them, while minimizing bullying and dangerous behavior. That’s not easy. But Facebook’s roots lie in private social networks — not completely public ones — and over the years, it has developed a talent for handling this sort of delicate situation. It just needs a little more finesse.
Keep it off the permanent record
When trying to explain the success of ephemeral messaging apps like Snapchat, the press tends to focus on the lurid, pointing to naked pictures and sexts. But the bigger reason teens like these apps is that they need to keep their Facebook profiles pristine, lest they scare off college admissions officers, summer job hiring managers or future romantic interests, all of whom have learned to vet people via Facebook. The need to escape this “permanent record” is why Facebook’s Poke embraced disappearing media, and it’s why Facebook should continue down this road.
The prospect of teens sending each other often-racy ephemeral messages makes advertisers very nervous. But whatever Facebook loses in short-term ad revenue should be more than made up for by the long-term benefits of roping in loyal new users when they’re teens.
Keep changing
As anyone in the music or fashion business can tell you, teen tastes are finicky. Even if Facebook launches a Snapchat-scale hit tomorrow, there’s a good chance it will need something fresher in a year or two. The ultimate challenge for Facebook is to keep evolving with changing tastes.
I am not a marketer but I can imagine that some creative-types out there could find some very clever ways to incorporate these tips into their own marketing to teens. Have you seen these trends in marketing and advertising? Can you think of any current examples? Or examples of how it can work?