Facebook Targets Shrinking Teen Audience With LOL Meme Service

Facebook has found itself facing the ire or many users and even the federal government with a potentially record-breaking FTC fine coming for the social network over privacy violations. Facebook also found itself accused of using the viral Facebook 10-year challenge to feed its AI, something it denies. A new report is making the rounds that Facebook is working on something new to woo younger crowds that flock to the web just for laughs.

A new meme service called LOL is reportedly in the works as an attempt to reach teens and lure them to the social network. The social media giant has faced an increasingly difficult time luring in younger users who instead turn to alternatives like Instagram. Facebook needs these younger users to join to sustain the growth it needs for the future.

Reports indicate that a small number of users in the U.S. are currently testing the service, which is said to be in its very early stages. The test users reportedly consist of only 100 high school students who all had parent permission for the beta test. Reports indicate LOL offers themed collections of memes, but the memes are said to be stale often having been shared other places on the web days or weeks before turning up on LOL.

The assumption would be that LOL is intended to be the place that users would come to upload new memes rather than other places on the web once up and running for the masses. LOL might gain users, and newer memes, if it can woo meme uploaders to add their fresh content there. Considering the raft of failures that Facebook has had in its attempt to reach younger users, like Watch and Lasso, the success of LOL is far from guaranteed.