Taking a Look Back and Forward With Facebook

Unless you have been living under a rock, you already know that this year marks the 10 year anniversary of the almighty Facebook. In honor of this momentous occasion, the social media giant decided to celebrate by involving all of its users in a new feature called “A Look Back.”

This reflective video tool took over the Facebook feeds of users across the globe and even has a near viral following for some of our favorite characters from television and movies.

While this popular feature is currently the talk of the town, Facebook will soon need to take a look at their future and begin formulating strategies to keep them at the top of their game for years to come.

What is “A Look Back?”

Facebook’s anniversary feature, A Look Back, is a compilation video of highlights from a user’s history on the social media site from over the past 10 years. It includes photos, as well as popular posts from each users account set to music to create a feeling of sentiment and nostalgia.

Once your video is created, you can share it with your friends so that they can all get a glimpse into your past via Facebook images and updates.

Editing Your Video

While the video is a true collection of each account’s history, many users quickly decided that it was not a true representation of them, in their own eyes at least. So, the narcissists of the Facebook realm were granted with an option to edit their video.

This new addition of editing capabilities is quite simple to use and allows each user to pick and choose, out of a pre-selected collection, the photos and posts that they want to feature in their video.

It’s Going Viral

These videos took off like wildfire and blew up the Facebook feeds of users everywhere. Your family, friends and even your friendly neighborhood electrician shared their video with the digital world. While it began as a personal little piece of sentiment for each user, things shifted very quickly.

“A Look Back” took a turn for the world of viral internet. Breaking Bad’s Walter White got a Facebook tribute of his very own, and the internet made sure to get it out there for everyone to see. Who else has their video floating around? None other than Darth Vader, himself!

You can find these highlight reels for just about anyone if you look hard enough, which has internet searches for Facebook becoming very popular.

What Is Next for Facebook?

While “A Look Back” is a genius marketing campaign for Facebook, users will become bored with the feature fairly quickly as it is more of a once and done type of feature. So, where are they headed next?

With a growing number of reports showing that many younger users are leaving the social media haven, Facebook will need to find new ways to bring in and retain a younger crowd. This demographic may not be in a position of any type of power at the moment, but they are the leaders of tomorrow and they will be the users that Facebook depends on in the future.

On the other hand, older demographics are shifting to a new high on the site. This brings up the importance of what they need to be focusing on next, which is relevant Facebook advertisements. The marketing on the sides of a users feed is simply not up to par quite yet in terms of targeting a specific consumer. Facebook does seem to be working on this which can be seen as a direct correlation to the growing number of older users.

These older demographics have much more spending power at the moment than their younger counterparts, so the advertisements generated need to be well focused in order to bring in more money from those with disposable incomes.

Moral of the story? Watch for Facebook to really focus on retaining their younger crowd all while selling to the older demographics with a more targeted marketing strategy.

 About The Author: 

Savannah Marie is a social media junkie, online marketing wizard and consultant for SEOcompanyGo. Catch up with her on Twitter and Google+