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Why Facebook doesn’t call you a user anymore

Posted at 4:45 PM, Dec 12, 2014
and last updated 2014-12-12 16:45:09-05

Facebook has made an internal shift on how it refers to the people who use the social networking service.

The company no longer calls people signed up on the site, “users.”

Instead, the new policy is to call them “people.”

At the Atlantic Technology Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, a Facebook spokeswoman explained the company’s softened approach to humanizing its customers.

She said it’s arrogant to think the only reason people exist is to use what you built. And that the company should recognize they have lives outside of the product experience.

Facebook also has an empathy team that trains employees and advertisers to see the site from the customer’s point of view.

The goal is to help Facebook designers and engineers create better products, and advertisers understand why a campaign did or didn’t take off with Facebook users.