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Mark Zuckerberg's plan for the future of Facebook
- hedgew 11y ago"We are taking a data-driven, product-driven approach to doing good in the world." If anything - if research is to be trusted - all they've done is make a billion people slightly unhappier by manipulating the way people socialize. If Facebook has done good; show me the data. So far the data seems to indicate that internet.org is comparable to releasing swarms of burrowing parasites upon the poorest of the world.
- SpaghettiCat 11y agoThe good they've done is fill the demand of 1/6 of the world's population who use the site. > So far the data seems to indicate that internet.org is comparable to releasing swarms of burrowing parasites upon the poorest of the world. Haven't a clue what you mean by this analogy.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago> "Haven't a clue what you mean by this analogy." The analogy is used because the benefit of Facebook as a tool to improve social relations is questionable. EDIT: For those downvoting, feel free to tell me why you disagree.
- roymurdock 11y agoI didn't downvote, but you failed to explain how Facebook's product could figuratively resemble a swarm of burrowing parasites. The original author is trying to hint at his perception of Facebook as a time/energy leech, and its ability to become deeply ingrained in someone's life, to the point where the person might not even realize they're carrying such a leech around. It also highlights the product's highly distributed nature. Seems a bit macabre and dramatic to me, but there you go.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago> "It also highlights the product's highly distributed nature." As far as I can see, that's not why the analogy was used. Clearly my interpretation was not clear enough, so to spell it out: A mission to spread Facebook to those who haven't been connected to the Internet yet is not necessarily a noble goal. It is only a noble goal if Facebook is a net positive in people's lives. If it is a net negative then spreading Facebook further through a program like Internet.org could do more harm than good. The less problematic features of Internet.org could be seen as the sugar coating on top of a less attractive proposition, parasites that disrupt how people relate to each other. I don't use Facebook that much, and I know some that are happy to use it casually, but I also know people who appear to be practically addicted to it. It's not too much to ask that we examine whether its benefits outweigh its drawbacks.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y agoI am seeing more of this attitude towards Silicon Valley every day. I really do hope the world's leading startup and tech habitat realizes that people are starting to get creeped out by data dicks tracking their every move and the arrogance of twentysomething billionaires who see the only way to a better world being more people who buy their products. One can only hope that a society of successful nerds re-learns the consequence of not being cool.
- something123 11y agoI'm gunna defend the otherside here. As a recent post on HN pointed out, when Google Maps happened people were outraged that you could look into their yards. Same thing with Street-View. Zuckerburg just understands that we're moving into a post-privacy world and they're really pushing the envelope here. For example I think people were outraged by Graph Search, but I think if they were to have released it in 2 years it would have been received differently. People were at first creeped out by Google Now and Amazon Echo, but now most people don't mind. The thing they should worry about is pushing the envelope too far and too fast. I think for-instance WeChat would have totally destroy Facebook if it weren't for its Chinese-gov't tentacles. It has a much saner privacy model where you only see things from your friends ( not to mention it has a much simpler and nicer interface )
- halflings 11y agoWhat does `post-privacy world` even mean? Who decided that that's where we're going and there's no alternative?
- kifler 11y agoI think the assertion is that Joe Public doesn't really care about his/her privacy anymore provided they consent to it's initial release. It seems to me that over a billion people are fine giving their privacy over to Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/<insert other company> but not necessarily the Government (of any country).
- watmough 11y agoFacebook's editorial control of users' postings makes it feel I have no control over when/where my own updates appear, thus rendering it irrelevant to me, though I do use it to follow others. Also, the bulk of my friends on Facebook, by and large, regurgitate garbage 'viral' content I have no interest in. Links to interesting content for me, are on Twitter, Bandcamp and YC.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoFacebook's editorial control of users' posting is the natural consequence of you having way too many people in your circle of friends. Average FB user has how many - 100 friends? 500 friends? If Facebook showed you all updates from everyone, as well as the large mass of fanpages you've subscribed to, you'd drown in the noise. The point being, any usable social network will have to filter user postings.
- chadgeidel 11y agoI've got fewer than 100 "friends" and there are a few whose posts don't show up in my newsfeed. I think their algorithm for showing what people post is fundamentally broken. Yes, I've gone through the "like/follow/show all posts" dance several times.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoI did the dance too, initially, but quickly got used to the new model. I have > 500 friends, so the chronological show-all model would seriously degrade the utility of Facebook (though I am annoyed when I accidentally refresh the feed and lose the posts I only wanted to read). It was a long time since I had < 100 friends, so I'm willing to believe the current model is broken for small amounts of Facebook relations.
- chadgeidel 11y ago"Just live with the way things are" has pretty much been my model for online services for many years now. It's the only way I can maintain some amount of sanity.
- cauterize 11y agoIf Facebook hadn't existed (nor any other high profile social network) I wouldn't have been invited to half the social events I've attended. Thus, I have a lot more friends than I did. Some data.
- pmlnr 11y agoAnd instead, you'd still have time to sleep, for hobbies; you could attend to less events for a longer time, or have meaningful conversations with fewer people. But true, a lot of friends with the ability to press a button or to select and emoji to communicate is way better.
- soylentcola 11y agoI'm picking up your cynicism and I've got plenty of complaints about Facebook myself (mostly related to how it's a closed-off system that requires you to use their service to communicate with people, unlike email where you can choose your provider/host and still communicate with people who prefer others). That said, the idea that you automatically use such services for shallow, mass communication with large numbers of fleeting friends is sort of disingenuous. I keep an account there because like many people, it's a fairly effective way to coordinate with friends and family without creating long email chains or massive group texts. Not everyone is trying to be a social butterfly, resigning themselves to quantity over quality or neglecting sleep and hobbies. Plenty of us have people we'd like to keep in touch with and a place to announce events (cookouts or parties we're holding, concerts or camping trips we're attending, etc) so our other friends and acquaintances can find out about them and join us in person. I've currently got a closed group on there where 4 or 5 of us have been sharing our progress on some neat electronic art projects we're working on. It's not something we use at the expense of hobbies and interests but rather a common tool for us to casually collaborate and share the things we're interested in and working on. So yeah, I'd love if I could use Google+ or some other service where I like the interface and features better and I'd love if that didn't require everyone to "jump ship" at the same time. A common protocol between social forums (again, like email) would go a long way toward addressing the complaints I have with them. But since that's not likely to happen, I'll take occasionally checking my Facebook accounts for things people have shared with me over missing out on those conversations due to distance or personal time constraints. I don't live on Facebook but I stop by a few times a week when I feel like looking at Facebook. Haven't lost any sleep over it yet and I've developed quite a few hobbies around the communication that FB and other services foster.
- forrestthewoods 11y agoFor me Facebook has generated approximately 70 happy points but only 15 unhappy points so it's a net positive. #Data More seriously, there is no way to respond to "show me the data". The data for Facebook being a net negative is weak as well. Despite living in the age of big data not everything can be quantified.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoFor me it's like 150 / 20. I guess it's just that the vast majority of people who are satisfied with Facebook don't have anything to whine about, so we don't notice them. (And yes, they're there - you can hear them whining for a month every time Facebook does a significant UI change - a month it takes to get used to it.)
- wslh 11y ago>... by manipulating the way people socialize. I realized this not receiving some of my wife updates in my stream!
- TeMPOraL 11y agoMark her as "close friend" / tick "Get Notifications", and you'll get every update along with a handy notification for each. Hover over the " Friends" button on her profile to enable that.
- marchenko 11y agoIs there good data on how Facebook use affects mood (outside of experiments to manipulate it directly)? It certainly increases the costs of being a sociable non-facebook-user.
- edanm 11y agoI really don't get the argument here. If you don't like Facebook, don't use it. No one is forcing you. Many people choose to use Facebook, and in fact use it a lot more than almost any other site/application. Who are you to decide for someone else whether Facebook is good or not? Who are you to decide that these people aren't really getting something out of Facebook? Who are you to decide that they're all "manipulated", forced to do something they don't want to? Seriously, at what point is it considered arrogant to just assume that so many people are "wrong"? 1 billion people choosing to use Facebook sure sounds like a pretty compelling argument that Facebook provides them with at least some value.
- dev1n 11y agoThere was a full blown study released stating Facebook actively manipulated users news feeds for something like 6 months [1]. That's one way to manipulate their emotions and such. [1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+study+manipulating+news+feeds&oq=facebook+study+manipulating+news+feeds https://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+study+manipulating+...
- TeMPOraL 11y agoOh, "manipulated". In no worse way than I'm manipulating you now by writing a hasty, little aggressively-toned response. Reading this comment will probably shift your mood a tiny percent down. Should I call my university's ethics board to ask if I can post this comment? The whole "Facebook manipulating emotions" fiasco is one of the most ridiculous things I've seen happening in the field of social sciences in front of my own eyes. And it illustrates a very dangerous thing about science reporting - hyperbolizing. Almost nobody reads the primary sources (like actual papers), so when a journalist starts using strong words like "manipulated", it colors people's interpretations of the issue, leading them to severly overestimating the meaning of the issue - lo and behold, you can create a shitstorm out of thin air. The way press was describing Facebook's "manipulating users' emotions" is akin to describing sneezing as an act of biological warfare. Scope matters.
- dev1n 11y ago
- dovdov 11y agoTL;DR: "I want my ads and stolen video contents in every last dug hole in the world, so you can like a starving child directly!" /s
- mroll 11y agoI don't know about the rest of you, but I know a lot of people, myself included, who have the patience to roast a golden brown marshmallow. I've only heard good things about Sandberg, but that seemed like a really weak anecdote to depict one of the world's most innovative people.
- Sven7 11y agoMark Zuckerberg isn't really a person. He represents a class of extremely misguided super smart rich people who convince themselves they are doing good by getting themselves richer.
- astazangasta 11y ago"If you are rich, you must, by definition, be doing good since you are providing a valued service that people are paying for." This is the logic; find it in this very thread.
- tjr 11y agoI think there are methods of becoming rich that pretty clearly do not involve doing "good", but even so, since Facebook users are not paying for the service, the most we could conclude here is that Facebook is doing good for advertisers. That may well be true.
- saiya-jin 11y agoone example out of many - services of arms smuggling make one quite rich if surviving long enough, not sure about doing good though
- ionised 11y agoRupert Murdoch is rich. Muamar Gadaffi was rich. I don't think that logic holds any weight.
- marincounty 11y agoDo you really think Zuckerberg is super smart? I've alway pegged him as a passive, aggressive regular guy. A guy who stole an idea for a website. An idea, I don't think he would have every stumbled upon--then, or now. We will never know? If not for capitalizing on someone else's idea, at the right time, I feel he would just be an average, probally single, programmer--that is if he finished school. I wil give him this, he is business ruthless, or has the foresight to know he doesn't know everything? He hires the right people. When I heard about his desire to make Internet.org a non-profit, I immediately thought it's not going to be in incorporated in California, where you can easily lose control of even a well meaning, selfless nonprofit, if your board members turn on you. I thought I got this guy Wrong. I then though he will go to Deleware--where you can run a nonprofit like a private business. That's the mark I was expecting. I now find out that's Internet.org is not a non-profit? Or, I got it wrong? Either way internet.org seems like Mark got his wish, and poor people have a dumbed down/spoon fed version of the Internet. An Internet where mark can have complete control? Some of you call that brilliant? I don't. Poor people should have the same advantages we all had in terms of Internet access? Anyway, he never struck me as a thinker, just driven? I think that rediculious movie about Zuckerburg/Facebook did a lot to further his super smart persona? Would a super smart guy create a social networking site? I actually think his averageness; has worked to his benefit. He thought FB would be cool. It might even get him laid? Why--because an average guy know's what what an average guy likes? Personally, I think, if Zukerburg is so intelligent, he will do some damage control on his seemingly selfish/controlling business plans, and dictatorship rules? I know there are certain parts of the country where people seem to be dropping out of FB? I kind of see that trend going on in the Bay Area? Around here, a big cheesy profile pic, and a 1000 friends is not cool anymore. It's just pathetic? Kinda like disco?
- hanspeter 11y agoGenuine question: Why does Facebook and Zuckerberg get such a hard time on HN when Google and Brin/Page doesn't? They basically have the same supposedly shabby business model.
- Jgrubb 11y agoTotally upsupported supposition - maybe because Zuck basically is in the same age bracket as a lot of the population on here, whereas Larry and Sergey are a bit older?
- hanspeter 11y agoCould be. Another difference is how they came to success. Zuckerberg solved an "easy" problem building a social network web app whereas the Google founders solved a "hard" problem building search engine algorithms.
- sparkzilla 11y agoHe didn't solve any problem. He stole the Winklevosses work.
- Jgrubb 11y agoI was thinking about this on the way home. Regardless of what has become of Google they started off with "don't be evil", whereas Facebook has basically been "by any means necessary" from day 1.
- hanspeter 11y agoThe Winklevosses didn't do any work. They wanted someone to build them a dating site for Harvard students. He was an asshole in their business relationship and should have stopped working with them the minute he was inspired to create Facebook. But he didn't steal anything that belonged to them. They would not have succeeded with their original idea even if they found a developer to do all the work for them.
- sparkzilla 11y ago>Sandberg: Mark said, ‘I’m going to make a marshmallow,’ " she tells me in her conference room, which is adorned with a framed drawing of her as Spider-Woman. "I looked at my friend and said, ‘He’s going to make the perfect marshmallow.’ Because he’s going to be the one out of all of us who is going to have the patience. In order to make the right marshmallow, you can’t do it right in the fire, because then it gets burnt. You can’t walk away. You actually have to sit there for five to 10 minutes with the marshmallow above the flame, but not too close, so that it gets completely heated but doesn’t burn. And the only person who’s actually willing to do that is Mark. Because he is that focused and that determined. I’ve never met anyone with more perseverance than Mark Zuckerberg. Coming soon to a VC interview: The s'mores test. Burn it and you're toast.
- ojbyrne 11y agoHonestly, that was the best anecdote they could come up with? Whatever PR person approved that should be fired. I'm pretty sure 90% of 10 year old boys would pass that test.
- roymurdock 11y agoI found the article pretty hard to read...it did not have a clear structure or narrative, had some weird, pithy quotes [1] [2] [3], and generally felt more like a puff piece written by a breathless admirer than serious journalism. But the main takeaway seems to be the "very clear" 5-10 year R&D roadmap for Oculus: > Oculus, then, represents two big bets in one: that VR will be the next major computing platform, supplanting phones the same way that handheld devices usurped desktops—and that human nature won’t change. "If you look at how people spend time on all computing platforms, whether it’s phones or desktops before that, about 40% is spent on some kind of communications and media," Zuckerberg says. "Over the long term, when [Oculus] becomes a more mature platform, I would bet that it’s going to be that same 40% of the time spent doing social interactions and things like that. And that’s what we know. That’s what we can do." Seems logical that VR is going to be FBs next big play, and their ability to get a good product to market relatively soon will be crucial. It's astounding how much revenue they are still able to pull in from a botspammed, broken advertising model on a product that (from my observations of friends/app store comments) is declining in popularity in the US, one of the most lucrative segments. [1] "This is not big data," says Bordes, who is wearing a T-shirt depicting a robot boxing a dinosaur. "This is supersmall data." [2] "I personally called up the guy who’s leading our laser-communications effort, who was working at [NASA’s] Jet Propulsion Laboratory," he recalls. "And he said, ‘What? Why are you calling me?’ And I said, ‘Because we’re connecting the world, and I want you to come in and meet the team, and this is something that’s really important to me, and I think we can make a big difference.’ " Even in the retelling, Zuckerberg makes it sound urgent. [3] Yael Maguire director, Connectivity Lab: "Our focus is technologies that can advance the state of the art by at least an order of magnitude. We don’t want to make something better by a factor of two or three, because the rest of the industry is going to do that."
- macavity23 11y agoAgreed. The Oculus acquisition still has me scratching my head. I don't doubt that VR will be a major technology, if the Oculus manages to follow up on the promise of the DK. But it seems so very different to FB's current market and core competency. Where are the synergies? Display ads within VR? From the reaction of visceral disgust I've seen to ads on the apple watch, I can't see anyone putting up with them in the Oculus. Maybe they're keeping something Insanely Great up their sleeve, but from their total failure to do anything at all with whatsapp or instagram, I'm not hopeful.
- mentos 11y agoI do not really see Mark as much of an innovator. He has said himself that he did not sell facebook early on because he did not think he'd have an idea as great and had no use for the money given his lifestyle. Innovation has come from the ground up with companies like Instagram - which facebook has purchased - but what has purchasing innovation done for facebook? Seems like people don't want to be at Mark's party so he went and bought the building the next party was in.. I see purchasing Oculus to try to 'own' VR kind of like buying AOL in '98 to try to own the internet. I feel like this is taking a technology and trying to see what features you can provide rather than asking what features you need and then finding the technology necessary to provide them..
- wahsd 11y agoAll your internets are belong to us. Resistance is futile. What was the date for Genisys to launch again? Some time in October 2017?