The uber-popular social media giant, Facebook is testing out a new hub called “LOL” which will provide a platform to youngsters where they will be able to share and post humorous meme content.
Facebook has been losing the popularity battle to Snapchat and Instagram for some time now, many regard Snapchat or Instagram to be more popular social media platforms among the younger generation. In a bid to counter the decline in its popularity, Facebook is now building a dedicated space for users to discover and enjoy meme content.
According to TechCrunch, the new platform is designed and engineered as “special feed of funny videos and GIF-like clips” using content “pulled from News Feed posts by top meme Pages on Facebook”. There will a total of three reactions to the posts shared on the “LOL” platform, “Funny”, “Alright” and “Not Funny”. The platform is currently in beta testing and is being reviewed by some 100 high school students who have signed a non-disclosure agreement with Facebook. According to the Facebook spokesperson:
“LOL’ is currently in private beta with around 100 high school students who signed non-disclosure agreements with parental consent to do focus groups and one-on-one testing with Facebook staff.”
“LOL” is currently categorized into a number of topics, for example, “Animals”, “Fails” and “Pranks”. There will also be special feed for funny videos and GIF-like clips. It is yet to be decided whether “LOL” will be a different standalone-app or will it be merged and introduced via a new icon in the regular Facebook app.
According to social media experts, LOL’s UI design and the idea is similar to Snapchat’s discover feed.“LOL” has a section called “Dailies” which includes themed content which is similar to the small curated clips that Snapchat shows in its Discover feed. Facebook previously launched “Watch tab” which turned out to be a failure as it failed to attract most of the millennials.
Facebook currently has 2.2 billion users globally, which is a huge user-base and their new “LOL” experiment may attract a huge chunk of the young audience. 9gag, a popular Facebook page and site became extremely popular over the years purely because of its meme content. The site currently has more 100 million unique visitors every month.
These statistics are a clear indicator that meme sharing is a very popular activity on with the young generation and if the social media giant manages to successfully introduce a new meme platform, there is a big chance that it can regain some of the interest that the new generations seem to be losing in Facebook.
