It’s been a decade, and a lot has altered in that time. There are now 1.79 billion active Facebook users per month. New features are continually being developed, tested, and released.

I’ve been monitoring both the most recent changes and the longer-term tendencies on Facebook. To kick off 2017, I provide the following forecasts.

I have categorised them under four main ideas that I believe will have a significant impact on Facebook’s future.

Increasing Brand Advertising Opportunities on Facebook.

What we mean when we say “new ways for Facebook to make money” is that the company will see a rise in its earnings. For a number of years, this has been one of the most reliable patterns on Facebook.

Facebook’s chief financial officer, David Wehner, recently explained why ad load (the proportion of advertisements to other content on a page) will soon become less effective. Ad load is expected to play a less role in driving revenue growth beyond mid-2017, Wehner said on a November 2 earnings conference.

This means that Facebook will need to provide more channels for businesses to connect with users.

1. Robots that can make money

Mark Zuckerberg has previously stated, “we’re not going to try to monetize them” until a product achieves one billion users. Yes, and guess what? The benchmark was just achieved by Facebook’s Messenger.

Zuckerberg has stated in the past that Messenger will use a similar method of revenue as Facebook.

Facebook encouraged advertisers to develop engaging content-based pages rather than spam the platform with banner advertising. Facebook then implemented measures to slow its organic growth and start charging businesses to promote their products in users’ Newsfeeds.

2. Live-streamed video with advertising

Digiday recently revealed that Facebook Live would soon allow for advertising. Facebook may insert video or display adverts into the live stream during the broadcast itself or during commercial breaks, the site claims.

Facebook has placed a greater emphasis on video; in its most recent earnings conference, the company disclosed that 500 million users view 100 million hours of video each day. With the recent emphasis Facebook has placed on live video, it is reasonable to expect the platform to pursue monetization strategies at some point.

3. The importance of call-to-action buttons on regional company webpages

New Calls to Action buttons for local business Pages have been under testing on Facebook as of late. The goal is to enhance the user experience by facilitating different tasks, such as placing a takeout order, on the company’s Facebook Page.

Facebook thinks this will improve the completion rate since local companies frequently provide a poor mobile experience due to a lack of resources.

Facebook’s ever-changing patterns can help you stay one step ahead of the game.
Working with technology requires a relentless pursuit of novelty. This is considerably simpler to do as a new company and becomes more challenging as you grow to dominate your industry.

In the same way that Kodak and Blockbuster both missed the boat when it came to the photography and video rental industries, respectively, respectively, neither company saw the advent of Netflix coming. I’m not saying Apple will collapse like the other IT giants of yesteryear, but its recent product announcements have been disappointing.

4. Market Introduction

In October, Facebook introduced a new feature called Marketplace, which allows its users to conduct localised sales and purchases. Users may access the marketplace and communicate with the vendor directly from the app. Is this an attempt to stop Shpock before it becomes a major problem? Alternatively, perhaps, you might provide a regional substitute to eBay.

5. Debut in the Office

In October, Facebook also released Workplace, a business version of its popular app. It’s like Facebook, but for the office, and it even has certain things Facebook doesn’t.

Facebook has used this for quite some time internally, but recently they’ve been working on rolling it out to all businesses. Is there a connection between this and the popularity of tools like Slack and Microsoft’s new Teams (and the company’s older, still-active Yammer)?

6. Trendspotting on Snapchat

Some new Facebook features have a similar vibe to those on Snapchat. It has a long history of adding Snapchat-like features to its products and even made an offer to acquire Snow, an Asian firm with a similar business model.

That might be because it’s concerned about another trend we mentioned last year: the rising percentage of teenagers who don’t use Facebook.