Facebook reportedly developing LOL meme app to try to appeal to teens

[BUtterfield 8 41,251]

How do you do, fellow kids? After Facebook  Watch, Lasso and IGTV failed to become hits with teens, the company has been quietly developing another youthful video product. Multiple sources confirm that Facebook has spent months building LOL, a special feed of funny videos and GIF-like clips. It’s divided into categories like “For You,” “Animals,” “Fails,” “Pranks” and more with content pulled from News Feed posts by top meme Pages on Facebook. 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.

In response to TechCrunch’s questioning, Facebook confirmed it is privately testing LOL as a home for funny meme content with a very small number of U.S. users. While those testers experience LOL as a replacement for their Watch tab, Facebook says there’s no plans to roll out LOL in Watch and the team is still finalizing whether it will become a separate feature in one of Facebook’s main app or a standalone app. Facebook initially declined to give a formal statement but told us the details we had were accurate. [Update: A Facebook spokesperson has now provided an official statement: “We are running a small scale test and the concept is in the early stages right now.”]

With teens increasingly turning to ephemeral Stories for sharing and content consumption, Facebook is desperate to lure them back to its easily-monetizable feeds. Collecting the funniest News Feed posts and concentrating them in a dedicated place could appeal to kids seeking rapid-fire lightweight entertainment. LOL could also soak up some of the “low-quality” videos Facebook scrubbed out of the News Feed a year ago in hopes of decreasing zombie-like passive viewing that can hurt people’s well-being.

But our sources familiar with LOL’s design said it still feels “cringey”, like Facebook is futilely pretending to be young and hip. The content found in LOL is sometimes weeks old, so meme-obsessed teens may have seen it before. After years of parents overrunning Facebook, teens have grown skeptical of the app and many have fled for Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube. Parachuting into the memespehere may come off as inauthentic posing and Facebook could find it difficult to build a young fanbase for LOL.

In one of the recent designs for LOL, screenshots attained by TechCrunch show users are greeted with a carousel of themed collections called “Dailies” like “Look Mom No Hands” in a design reminiscent of Snapchat’s Discover section. Below that there’s a feed of algorithmically curated “For You” clips. Users can filter the LOL feed to show categories like “Wait For It”, “Savage”, “Classics”, “Gaming”, “Celebs”, “School”, and “Stand-Up”, or tap buttons atop the screen to see dedicated sub-feeds for these topics.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/18/facebook-lol/

[derpmonster 22,412]

[GagaMariaSpears 1,627]

[highongaga 848]

who asked for this 

[KatieJudasGaga4 67,907]

1 minute ago, highongaga said:

who asked for this 

The teens obviously 

[JustAnother 5,113]

Teen want jazz

[Serial Chiller 8,044]

cringeeee 
.....

So this is what being old feels like. 

[derpmonster 22,412]

But teen want pop

At least the teens in Azerbaijan

[GagaMariaSpears 1,627]

3 hours ago, JustAnother said:

Teen want jazz

[RAMROD 107,119]

They should learn their actual base users are consisting of new moms who loves to post pictures of their new born and make an app for that instead

[Luna Lovegood 24,251]

cringe 

[Pacify Him 9,073]

Time to erase FB forever

[EnigmaGaga 188]

Who even uses Facebook anymore? 

[IAmNotHere1997 25,824]

C R I N G E .

time to deactivate my Facebook account for good (as if I actually use it)

[Babel 41,308]

Ye- I just realized I’m too old for this