MENLO PARK (REUTERS) – Facebook has long sought your attention. In recent weeks, it has started asking for your prayers as well in a new tool now available for United States Facebook Groups.
The prayer feature is part of Facebook’s recent and concerted outreach to the religious community, which it is speaking about in detail to media for the first time.
Facebook sees worshippers as a vital community to drive engagement on the world’s largest social media platform.
As early as 2017, CEO Mark Zuckerberg cited churches as one example in a lengthy manifesto on connecting the world and the company created a team focused on “faith partnerships”.
Covid-19 gave new urgency to the efforts, Facebook’s head of faith partnerships Nona Jones told Reuters in an interview. The new prayers product was spun up after the company saw an increase in people asking each other for prayers during the pandemic, said Ms Jones, who is also a pastor in Florida.
The outreach culminated in the company holding its first virtual faith summit with religious leaders last month.
During the live event broadcast on Facebook Live where the company played videos with heart emojis floating across the screen as religious leaders ministered to their congregations, chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg discussed a future where leaders engaged worshippers with virtual reality tools and augmented reality.
At the end of May, Facebook made its prayer tool, which it had been testing with some faith communities, accessible for all US Facebook Groups to turn on.
In one private Group seen by Reuters, a woman used the tool to request prayers for an aunt sick with coronavirus. People replied by clicking a button to say “I prayed”, and their names were counted underneath.
Users could choose to be notified with a reminder to pray again tomorrow. Others requested prayers for a daughter’s broken heart, a son’s driving test and problems with an insurance company.
Ms Jones confirmed prayer posts are used to personalise ads on Facebook, like other content. A spokesman said the data could feed into how Facebook’s machine learning systems decide which ads to show users.
Advertisers will not be able to directly target ads based on the content of the prayer or use of the feature, the person said. The spokesman also said prayer tool use would not be factored into the categories that ad buyers already use to slice up Facebook audiences based on a demonstrated interest in topics, like “faith”, or “Catholic Church”.
“One of the biggest communities using Facebook products to connect are people of faith,” said outgoing Facebook app head Fidji Simo, in a fireside chat at the summit, following panels with religious leaders and a session for spiritual breathwork, a breathing and meditation exercise.
“When I looked at the data of what was taking off during the pandemic, we were seeing massive growth in the spiritual category.”