On Thursday, Facebook announced that over the next few months, it would make its mentorship feature available for all groups. The idea is to encourage people to use the platform for what has typically been an offline activity: seeking help and advice from those with more experience.
That change, along with other additions to its groups feature, likely point to a new approach for the company as it looks to retain users.
Mentorship is not a new idea for Facebook: it was first introduced to the platform in August 2018 but only to specific groups like those focused on parenting as well as personal and professional development.
The expanded version of the program operates with the same templates as the initial version including career development, skill development as well as encouragement and support.
The set-up is pretty simple: group members can sign up to be mentors or mentees and then group administrators will match them up. Participants then have access to guided mentorship programs on Facebook and are encouraged to be in frequent contact.
As many mentor-mentee relations are already virtual or over the phone, Facebook is clearly trying to adapt its platform to fill what it sees as a missing service.
That’s in keeping with other recent changes from the company which also announced new tools for administrators including easier rules, updated activity logs, and new posting options on Thursday.
Those changes highlight how the company plans to keep users engaged and active on the platform. As many people have looked to other services like Twitter, Facebook is evidently trying to capitalize on facilitating more in-depth and personal interactions — something that isn’t as integrated on other platforms.
That, of course, is made all the more difficult after a company faced numerous data breaches and other challenges in 2018 that rightly left many users skeptical of their privacy.
Still, Facebook thinks that it has a shot at retaining users by helping them form communities and build those groups through things like the mentorship features.
The success of this strategy, of course, requires buy-in from users. Indeed, things like mentorships and even friendships, no matter how they are facilitated, are only as strong as the individuals involved make them.
Facebook knows that, which seems to be the crux of the strategy: offer users a way to strengthen real relationships fostering a more intimate version of the platform once dominated by thousands of friends that were really acquaintances and news feeds that were mostly scrolled through rather than engaged with.
