Facebook Updates for 2020 and Zuckerberg's Vision of the Future

At the beginning of 2020, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described to the media what he perceives as the biggest challenge for his platform, and where he sees the future headed. That vision is described below, along with a number of updates which Facebook will undergo, or has already implemented in line with that vision of the future.As you might expect for any time frame which encompasses a full ten years, Zuckerberg's vision of the future was far-ranging, yet is still closely aligned with issues that are already being faced by social media platforms, and which may be problematic or uncomfortable. Some of these coming changes are fairly predictable in nature, while others represent a bit more of a stretch in terms of their likelihood of coming to pass. At any rate, they should all be taken seriously, since these are visions of the future as seen by a person who has accurately anticipated the future very accurately, on several occasions in the past.

Mark Zuckerberg's vision of the future

Every year since 2009, Facebook's CEO has set forth a personal challenge for himself, so that he could acquire personal growth in areas beyond his daily administration of the Facebook platform. For 2020, Mr. Zuckerberg has decided to take a more futuristic view, and to consider those elements of his personal life and the global picture, which he would like to improve upon for the next decade.His earnest desire for a connected planet and a personally relevant future are of course, tightly associated with the apps and technology which will be available through Facebook. In the past, his personal challenges have been to learn the Mandarin language, to develop an artificial intelligence assistant for his household, to increase his book-reading efforts, to do a lot more physical exercise, becoming more proficient at cooking and hunting, and gaining more confidence when speaking in front of crowds.In addition to the evolving responsibility he has at Facebook, Mr. Zuckerberg is now also a father with family commitments, and he is much more involved with philanthropy, hobbies, and sports. One of the first areas he wants to address is generational change, in the sense that he feels young people need more of a voice in society, as opposed to their past marginalization. He feels that millennials will be running more corporations in the near future, and will thus be more sympathetic to the plight of that generational group.

Next, he foresees continuing emphasis on creating private communities on Facebook and other platforms, as a kind of reaction to the fact that the Internet has connected everyone and has created a very public grouping of individuals. People still crave privacy and this new version of social media will provide more of the privacy everyone wants, while still remaining publicly accessible.Mr. Zuckerberg also predicts much greater availability of all the emerging tools and technologies for small businesses. In the past, small businesses have not had the same kind of access to all the newest and most powerful technologies, but that will change in the coming decade, he says. Of particular interest to most people will be Zuckerberg's vision of the next computing platform, which he sees as something still based largely on mobile phones, but with much greater capability in terms of augmented reality.The real value of A/R is that it makes you 'present' in a given situation, rather than the remote-ness which you would normally experience in any given location. This added presence might solve a great many issues and problems, particularly in the area of taking on the responsibilities of a job, while not being physically present at the job site.The last area touched upon by Zuckerberg in his futuristic vision is in the area of governance. He sees less involvement from corporations and businesses in making decisions which affect communities online, and perhaps more involvement by governing bodies. This will lend greater legitimacy to those decisions, and will allow them to be accepted by greater numbers of people. Another aspect of this governance issue could be that individual communities begin governing themselves online, negating the need for official intervention.

User option to hide Ads targeted

One coming update to the Facebook platform will be the capability of allowing users to manage in some way how advertisers reach them through the Custom Audience From List feature. This update is expected to be rolled out in early 2020, and it will impact all campaigns which target custom audiences. If users don't want to be reached by Ads, they will have the capability of blocking them, so that they don't have to be bothered. In other cases, if you happen to be receptive to advertising about specific products or from specific companies, you can allow those Ads to come through.

Traffic Source Insights for Videos

Facebook will be adding Traffic Source Insights, which is a whole new group of video insights which can be used to to track, manage, and monetize the performance of all kinds of video content. This new package of insights is scheduled to be rolled out to all Facebook users during the first half of 2020, and is eagerly anticipated by many heavy-duty video users.

Greater access for Page Administrators

An update which Facebook has subtly introduced without any fanfare, is the ability for Page Administrators to review all those actions which may have been taken by other Page Administrators. Some of the activities for which information will be made available are related to page role allocations, changes to page settings, Business Manager relationships, and a good deal more contact information.This is intended to be a Page Management history feature which provides Page Admins with much greater visibility into a number of different actions that other Administrators have taken with regard to their Personal Pages. This new feature has already been rolled out, and is fully usable by everyone who has a Page Administrator role in Facebook. Each of the actions listed will be associated with the date when the change was made, so that it will be possible to track all actions in time.