Facebook offers some good functionality for keeping in touch etc, but it's littered with too much noise and too much influencing (to the point that it's unpleasant to use). If they fix that, they'll be okay. If not, there may be a mass exodus to something else once enough people get sick of it.
I have this theory that they've noticed that the platform is being used less and less, and is why we're getting so much ads mixed with our friends' posts. They're milking the cow before it dies.
I feel bad writing that because I like facebook. But I use it less and less in favor of messenger, just because I see less and less about my friends in my news feed.
Now their other acquisitions instagram and whatsapp seem pretty healthy, and VR is the future, so I wouldn't worry about the company as a whole.
Instagram is also becoming a monotonous and boring platform to use. The more ads and other junk features they cram into it, the less people will want to use it.
Instagram used to be my go-to social media, and the millions of images of peoples dinners didn't annoy me, but I find myself using it less and less because of the non-chronological feed. I still don't understand how it can possibly be better than a chronological one.
If anything I wish they would give an option in the settings to make it chronological
Generally if they keep a feature it means that the majority of people were more engaged by it, so the algo feed is probably increasing engagement across the board but alienating a few users.
This. When companies start looking at features and changes through the lenses of a metric, everything follows that metric. I'm sure that drives more engagement, therefore it's enforced on everybody.
Unfortunately they're not measuring abandonment or annoyance. Metrics like these are the short-term gain investors of today tech, always looking into the today and ruining the tomorrow.
It's not so specific as alienating a few users, it's removing an intuitive UX feature in exchange for the ability to control the order of the content you see, which can increase engagement.
The same things happened with Twitter and FB. There are some tweets I've seen dozens of time because the algorithm think it is relevant, but I just want the latest thank you.
Instagram continually shows me photos from 2-3 days prior. I get shitty ads on a regular basis. The quality of the platform is definitely degrading quickly.
I've never understood the pseudo-ephemerality of instagram. Even if you save stuff, or like it, the interface makes it very difficult to recall stuff from more than a few days ago.
How do you do that? I couldn't find a good way when I looked. It is incomprehensible to me why Google supports the incredibly annoying bait (high res image for Googlebot) and switch (sign up to see high res in browsers) tactic of Pinterest. That shit certainly doesn't make me sign up, it makes me hate Pinterest.
> I've never understood the pseudo-ephemerality of instagram. Even if you save stuff, or like it, the interface makes it very difficult to recall stuff from more than a few days ago.
Hypothesis: these businesses all monetize # of interactions (even if CPI is low), which they want to maximize by structuring interactions such that there is constantly new content that encourages obsessive checking. A sense of ephemerality of content reinforces that behavior ("I have to check because there is new content and it may be gone if I wait to check").
Well, yeah, because they're talking about FB the product, not FB the company. From that point of view, "FB sucks and I'm using Instagram now" is a very valid statement.
> I have this theory that they've noticed that the platform is being used less and less, and is why we're getting so much ads mixed with our friends' posts. They're milking the cow before it dies.
Um, no. Facebook remains the most popular app in the United States with a comfortable lead. It's surpassed only by its own Whatsapp and Messenger globally. I think I read that in terms of time spent in an app, Facebook still beats Whatsapp, but I can't find the stat right now. Facebook just crossed 2 billion MAUs this year.
Its advertising revenue grows at close to 50% a year. Obviously part of that is showing more ads per user, but it's also growth in app usage. I'd say the cow keeps sprouting new udders and they are feverishly trying to keep up with attaching the pumps.
That doesn’t necessarily prove your point. It’s possible that advertising and install counts are lagging indicators, and that there are leading indicators like engagement showing trouble down the road. Anecdotally I’ve heard that this is the case.
when you think about it, it's a bad simulacrum of the social encounter and experience. i use mine as a blog for issues and feelings that have provoked a big response in me but it's far from ideal
But WhatsApp and Instagram are not that big a percentage of overall revenues. And if they do monetise them further, they risk becoming annoying to use like Facebook. Just realised something - as Facebook extracts more money from users it actually delivers LESS value to users. This is somewhat different to normal business where you earn more when you deliver MORE value for your users/customers.
This is exactly the problem with advertising as a business model. You necessarily have to make your product worse to make more money, and it becomes a balancing act. Subscription SaaS services on the other hand are free to make the product as clean and easy to use as possible.
> I have this theory that they've noticed that the platform is being used less and less
I have no data to substantiate but I doubt if it is true. May be in first world but coming from India, I believe there is still a huge market for Facebook. Internet literally means WhatsApp and Facebook to masses who are now getting affordable mobile phone and data connectivity.
There's really no evidence of VR being the future. It's useful for some games and visualization / design work but I expect that 20 years from now we'll still be using flat 2-D displays most of the time, supplemented by AR for mobile use.
I've watched many major social media sites come & go. Most go because the signal-to-noise ratio drops to unacceptable, overrun with people whom people didn't come to hear from. Increase of "censorship" also drives people away, as ham-fisted or biased means of reducing noise frustrate good users.
Take a look at the good money does vs the negatives it brings about the world. Even if it does some good things, the negative consequences are orders of magnitudes larger. you wouldn't keep a poisonous house plant that gives you cancer just because it also provided you with menial amounts of oxygen or a pet that viciously attacks you constantly anytime you come home because sometimes its cute to look at from outside the safety of your window
That's way overboard. My original post was being somewhat facetious. I am in no way suggesting that a return to a barter based economy will make people happier.
The barrier to entry for an upstart is less than you might expect.
According to multiple lines of argument, the value of a network for users scales like O(n log(n)) where n is the number of users. The log(n) factor is sufficiently small that a new and better platform can get traction if the user experience on the most popular one degrades enough.
Now this has actually been happening, but Facebook has learned from what happened to Friendster and then MySpace and has been buying up potential competitors such as Instagram and Whatsapp. However it is just a question of time until a successful competitor doesn't sell..then manages to take Facebook's crown from it.
This probably won't happen within 5 years. I'd give it even odds in 10. But I wouldn't bet on Facebook remaining king for 20.
I enjoy running into people or meeting up with them periodically to keep in touch with anyone who isn't a close friend. That way they can tell me everything they've been going through in person. To me that's more fun than getting a stream of micro updates on everyone.
Keeping up-to-date with multiple people using FB is like trying to watch multiple shows in short snippets concurrently mixed together. When you could just wait a bit and then watch it all as a contiguous story or have a real meaningful conversation with a person to catch up over dinner or something.
And what do you suggest for people who have broader circles of friends all over the world, and/or can't jet-set to visit them all periodically? A platform's utility to you might not equal its utility for others.
Email, text messages, the telephone, and a million other similar services?
I will point out that the parent seems to be referring to the posts that people make to no specific recipient. That is not keeping contact with your friends, this is watching your friend make an appearance on TV, so to speak. Admittedly neat the first time you see it, but the novelty quickly fades when they are "on TV" every day.
Yes, Facebook Messenger and Groups do actually provide a decent service for keeping contact with friends around the world. You can absolutely use Facebook in that way, but, from the perspective of business longevity and health, does it really provide more than similar services that do the same?
Personally, I'm not sure the network effects are as strong when talking about friends keeping in contact with each other. If I want to check in with a close friend who lives abroad, it is not a huge barrier to ask for their phone number or email address. And chances are I already have that information.
The one value proposition that Facebook does have, in my option, is that it is the internet's "telephone book". For acquaintances that you want to contact and have to look them up to find them, it is a pretty good bet that you will find them on Facebook. But there is also plenty of competition here as well, such as Linkedin, which seems to embrace the "telephone book" concept even more so than Facebook.
> Email, text messages, the telephone, and a million other similar services?
Mostly one to one, meaning more time investment if you want to reach a bunch of people with some news. Or maybe a mailing list you'd have to manage (which can be quite a chore thanks to spam). Dependency on high/reliable bandwidth for the video-char route. Again, utility to one might not equal utility to others. Some people have less free time to do everything in the way you or wybiral might, or maybe they just have different preferences. Maybe they actually enjoy seeing two of their friends who would otherwise never meet discover a common interest, or maybe even have a good argument, in the comment thread for something they posted. Maybe they're perfectly happy with "short snippets concurrently mixed together" and would derive less utility from your alternatives. It's awfully judgmental, and even a bit privileged, to assume that you're doing social life right and they're doing it wrong.
> It's awfully judgmental, and even a bit privileged, to assume that you're doing social life right and they're doing it wrong.
There is no right and wrong, but the fact remains that watching a carefully curated TV program featuring your friend is not keeping contact with your friend. It is watching your friend play a role on TV.
Hey, if that makes you happy, I'm not here to judge. It makes no difference to me if someone likes watching TV and is able to feel a connection to the players shown. But I think for most people the novelty of seeing their friend on TV starts to wane over time. I think for most people friendship requires mutual reciprocation and involvement, not glimpses of the person appearing on their TV each night.
Maybe I'm way off base, but from a business perspective, it seems Facebook has to maintain its attractiveness in spaces where competition is already high, and where there is little barrier for users to switch to on a whim. The network effects that have allowed Facebook to become what it is do not seem to be there long-term.
Problem with Facebook is the difficulty of keeping circles separated, resulting in a frequent unwillingness to post. I often am unclear whether a potentially triggering post intended for a limited group will end up being broadly distributed, so often just don't or find another site to converse on.
Christ, I'm the opposite. I like Facebook for getting all the banal minutiae about kids and holidays and who's fucking whom out of the way so on the rare occasion I hook up with friends we can talk about whatever it was that drew us together in the first place.
Back when FB didn't exist... Friends didn't just talk about that kind of stuff either. That's like the typical smalltalk you make with people you don't really know, not conversations you have with friends.
To me FB just seems like an extra dose of that unnecessary smalltalk mixed with self-promotion with the only real benefit being basically an address book.
Before Facebook existed, if I didn't see someone for a year, I could pretty much guarantee I wouldn't see them again (barring odd coincidences).
These days I can arrange to hook up with an old colleague through Facebook because of Facebook and via Facebook and know exactly where s/he is in terms of work/relationships/kids, without the social pressure to spout the traditional cliches.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I was anxious quitting Facebook, but now that I have it feels so much more meaningful to meet with someone I haven't seen in months and have a nice lunch or dinner with them and catch up.
Catching up feels more important and seems to have more substance that way.
The little snippets people share on FB probably are also less personal, imo. It's stuff they're announcing to everyone instead of sharing with you or a small group.
It just doesn't feel like actually "keeping in touch" to me. Feels more like promoted content (from the people and the actual ads).
I quit for a number of reasons, excluding this one. It never occurred to me that keeping "up-to-date" in the way that you do on FB/Twitter/IG makes IRL less exciting. Once I had been off for a while and felt less self-conscious about being out of the loop, catching up was SO much more enjoyable! So was sending specific people specific photos over text. So was giving people in my life a chance to re-tell a story about something great that happened to them. It never occurred to me that I was missing out on that ...
Do people honestly use FB to keep up with what others are doing? IMO it seems like the primary use-case is to let everyone else know about what you are doing.
News Feed Eradicator is the only reason I haven't closed my Facebook account. A lot of my friends organize events via Facebook, so it's good to have for that. Status updates are mostly a waste of time.
OG Facebook jumped the shark when the timeline release that made the platform visually stunning (huge photos, etc) was scrapped in favor of a redesign that had more advertising space.
Not sure who made that product decision but it was lethal for me.
