Are you using Facebook now? Are you one of Facebook users? Based on the data in June 2017, Facebook users have reached 2 billion, after Facebook reached 1 billion in less than five years. Chris Cox, Facebook Chief Product Officer, said that “we’re getting to a size where it’s worth really taking a careful look at what are all the things that we can do to make social media the most positive force for good possible.”
The number of two billion leads Facebook to become the largest social app, which is more than Youtube, which is 1.5 billion. Developing countries in Asia and the rest of other countries also put a lot of efforts and push Facebook to become the largest social app. Facebook has optimized its app for cheap Android smartphones and low-bandwidth connections, so 746 million users come from developing countries especially in Asia. However, the government of China prohibits Facebook across the country, so a majority of Chinese individuals use Wechat as a social app. Wechat users reached 889 million in December 2016, which became the third large social app. The Chinese population is around 1.37 billion, and is one of the reasons why Wechat could be the third large social app. If Facebook could be used in China, the number of users could be dramatically increased.
The new mission statement of Facebook is “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” The statement seems very powerful and reasonable. Nevertheless, there are increasing of news like suicides on Facebook Live and fears that fake news got Donald Trump elected, which negatively affect the company. One of great question about social app is that whether or not it alienates individuals, which does not match the mission statement for Facebook. It is true that users could use social app to communicate with each other rather than face to face, but using app to communicate could not seem realistically communication because users could not get the various meanings of gestures and facial expressions. However, it is obvious that users whom have long distances between each other could have a simple communication by Facebook. Cox said that “there’s definitely a deep sense of responsibility in every part of the company, we’re getting to the scale where we have to get much better about understanding how the product has been used.” When Facebook is used in negative ways like suicide or bullying, users could see the negative sides of social app. “When you think about very complex systems that are affecting humanity, just being open about what’s happening. And then for example in the case of something like suicide or bullying, going and working with subject matter experts, getting the research on what’s the best possible thing that we can do, and then talking to the world about it,” Cox said. Thus, along with increasing number of users, Facebook undertakes more responsibility to make sure or guarantee something is not going to turn into sad.
