- Mark Zuckerberg addressed several recent policy changes in a company all-hands meeting on Thursday.
- Zuckerberg admitted that the company was slow to respond to TikTok’s rapid growth.
- The CEO also told employees to “buckle up” for an “intense” year ahead.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged the company was slow to respond to TikTok’s meteoric rise because executives didn’t view it as truly social, offering a rare window into how the tech giant missed one of social media’s biggest shifts in recent years.
“When I look back on TikTok, I think part of the reason why we were slow to it is because we didn’t think TikTok was social,” Zuckerberg said in a recording of an all-hands meeting obtained by Business Insider. “We looked at it and we thought, ‘Oh, this is like, a little more like YouTube.'”
The admission came in response to an employee’s question about whether Meta’s current focus on artificial intelligence might cause the company to miss the next major social media trend, as it did with TikTok.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Zuckerberg explained at the meeting that Meta’s traditional view of social interaction — centered around friends posting content and commenting — caused the company to initially misread TikTok’s appeal. The company failed to recognize how users were sharing TikTok content through private messages, which has become a crucial form of social interaction across Meta’s platforms.
“Because we were too dismissive up front, it wasn’t just about people commenting in the feed. It was about people seeing stuff in their feed and then sharing it into message threads,” Zuckerberg said, referring to the company’s instant messaging platforms WhatsApp, Messenger, and direct messaging in Instagram, where “the majority of social interaction is happening.”
Zuckerberg also addressed TikTok’s uncertain future in the US. President Trump signed an executive order on January 20 that gave TikTok 75 more days to operate in the US, as owner ByteDance will either have to divest from TikTok or it will be banned in the US.
“We don’t have control of what’s going to happen to Tiktok,” Zuckerberg said. “We have a lot of competitors, but they’re an important one. So, who’s gonna own Tiktok at the end of the year? What’s gonna happen? I mean, that’s a pretty big deal, something that’s a card that we get to turn over.”
Looking ahead, Zuckerberg emphasized that the company needs to avoid taking “too narrow of a view” of social interaction as it navigates the emergence of AI. He outlined a vision for AI-powered features in Facebook and Instagram feeds, including interactive AI agents that users can converse with and more immersive content experiences.
“I think the next trend here is there’re going to be things that either AI can produce, that we can just put in there… I think this year we’re gonna have stuff where it’s like, okay, you have an AI agent, and you can just start talking to it,” Zuckerberg said.
The Meta chief also pushed back against concerns that the company’s AI investments might detract from its core social media business, noting that as a large company, Meta needs to be able to “walk and chew gum at the same time.”
“If we can’t build Facebook and [the] next platform at the same time, then, like, eventually game over,” he said.
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