The shocking news came from Facebook, secretly it turned out that they had launched a new meme-making application called the Whale application, this was the result of a report compiled from The Information. This application can currently only be downloaded via the App Store, especially for those in Canada, where the list states that this application can edit and beautify some of your images or photos from your stock photo library. You can use some of the features provided such as applying filters, inserting stickers and emojis, and cutting. After the image or photo editing process is successful, you can share the results of the creation to some of your other social media accounts that are also owned by other Facebook such as Messenger, Whatsapp, and Instagram.
The application list confirms that the product development process was carried out by Facebook’s New Product Experiment (NPE) team, which was established early in 2019 to develop and research new experimental applications for the giant Facebook company. In line with this, Facebook confirms that they will use a different brand name with the aim of setting expectations that the application can be sold in the market very quickly, or if there is the worst possibility, then they will close the application if Facebook finds that they are no longer needed for people all over the world. NPE was also targeted to release two of their other applications which will be named with Aux and also Bump, aimed at students and students. A Facebook spokesman said that the application was launched to help companies find innovations in the form of applications that are currently being liked by many people in the world.
It seems very clear which demographics were the target of this application when it was first created and launched. Facebook is struggling to reach young people, especially those who are addicted to memes. A study conducted by Pew and published earlier this year said that almost half of all teenagers in America use Facebook. From the data that already exists, it might sound a lot, but the fact is Facebook is not the one that has the biggest grip, especially if you compare it to its golden age in the past when it was first launched. The strong competitiveness that has been given by the competitors of other application makers to Facebook turns out to constantly make this company lose its strength.
Facebook experiments when TikTok was developing rapidly
Facebook experiments with this new application were carried out amid the widespread use of the TikTok application, a social media application that focuses on videos that are popular among users who are just getting into their teens. Over the past few years after the product was launched outside of its home country, China, TikTok has been used by almost all circles and is a trusted and popular source of applications used to create memes and can be shared with almost all other well-known social media services. Throughout this year, it has been noted that the ByteDance application has approximately 500 million users worldwide and is on its way to the next stage they have planned to have 1.5 billion users from various walks of life around the world. It seems that their path will not be smooth, because there are signs that this month it is predicted that growth will begin to experience a slight slowdown.
With the presence of TikTok, the competition between the two will be tighter and indirectly the battle for social media supremacy will occur. Also recently, Facebook introduced a new feature called Reels. The product launch was carried out in Brazil. Reels are made by copying the style of posts that exist on TikTok, it is done so that the popularity of TikTok can be rivaled.
At the same time, TikTok has also penetrated the world of e-commerce, which allows top-class users to start connecting to their stores within posts. The users can then freely access the store and buy various types of goods without having to die the main application TikTok. Everything is done to facilitate its users.
The rapid growth of TikTok certainly raises polemics in the business world of applications. This is evidenced by criticism made by Mark Zuckerberg, who is also the owner of the Facebook company for application censorship applied by the Chinese government. Simultaneously, US government lawmakers are also investigating the ties of TikTok owned by ByteDance by directly visiting Beijing.
The Whale is currently on a long list of experimental applications that have been bought or launched by Facebook for years since the company was founded. The experimental applications include Moments, Lifestage, Notify, Slingshot, Poke, Moves, Hello, and Tbh. Now, the question that arises is whether the Whale will be able to expand to other markets outside of Canada? This might happen if the application succeeded in capturing the hearts of customers to use it, in other words successfully running the test. However, even if the Whale succeeds, Facebook can easily get rid of the Whale’s main application and immediately implement its tools in the Facebook application that they depend on. By following Facebook’s track record, we suggest not to be too attached to their latest experiments.
