CEO of rival TikTok, Mark Zuckerberg, failed to foresee a more recent social networking trend that helped drive its popularity.
The Facebook founder acknowledged that he “kind of missed” a more recent method that users “interact with discovered material” via social networking sites in an interview that was published in analyst Ben Thompson’s Statechery newsletter on Wednesday. He said that rather than seeing the information shared by the friends they follow, people are increasingly using their social networking “feeds” to find engaging content.

The social networking trend has “by and large shifted to you use your feed to discover content, you find things that are interesting, you send them to your friends in messages and you interact there,” Zuckerberg said. People still engage with content that their friends share in their feeds, but this interaction has decreased.
Therefore, the Facebook creator added, “In that world, it is actually somewhat less important who generates the information that you’re finding, you simply want the greatest content.” (Last year, Facebook changed its corporate name to Meta.)

Analysts have credited TikTok’s algorithm, which may suggest intriguing short films to users based on their habits and viewing history, for the app’s explosive growth in popularity. The corporation has faced serious challenges as a result of TikTok’s growth, including a loss in North American Facebook users and a stock price that has dropped more than 56% so far this year.
In the interview, Zuckerberg called TikTok a “really effective rival” and said that his business had been “a little sluggish to this because it didn’t fit my pattern of a social activity, it felt more like a shorter version of YouTube to me.”

Along with short videos, Zuckerberg thinks it’s critical for Meta to build AI that can suggest a variety of things to users, including photographs and text.
Occasionally, he stated, “I want to watch particular videos, but most of the time I just want the greatest stuff.”
This week, Meta unveiled the $1,500 Quest Pro virtual reality headset, designed for VR experts rather than beginners.