14 ms·

Facebook is King, Other Networks Fight for Scraps

144 points by etr71115 11y ago

larakerns 11y ago
The inability to monitor their whole network for scam advertising might cripple facebook's dominance as their main revenue source becomes less trusting but the scale of their operations relies on that consistent revenue: More on the ad scams: http://www.buzzfeed.com/sapna/say-no-to-the-dress http://www.buzzfeed.com/sapna/say-no-to-the-dress
- 55555 11y ago
  I doubt if, if only because the entire web and even offline world is equally filled with ad scams too. Go look at anything advertised via taboola our outbrain. :-/
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
petewailes 11y ago
It's an interesting piece, but I'd be more interested in analysis looking at the why behind that. What is it about the audience on the site, and the way the sites are presenting their content that is driving the non-FB sharing? Obviously this would need to be done with more sites than just those here. However, for a quick analysis, I nosed around three... Billboard have Facebook and Twitter sharing buttons on their articles, but not G+, so it's fair to assume that the G+ sharing is going on on the G+ platform, not from the site itself. Similarly, hovering over any image on TipHero presents share buttons for Facebook and Pinterest, and the bottom of their articles present a huge Share on Facebook button. However, no Twitter share button means they're getting nothing from that, and presumably not interacting in any way on G+ either. There's a similar story again with Bleacher Report, which has Facebook and Twitter buttons (but interestingly no Twitter shares - possibly the wrong audience?), the same for every image, and Facebook, Twitter and G+ share buttons at the base of each article. I think the takeaways from this are, Facebook is massive and cannot be ignored if you're publishing content, whilst everything else is dependent on whether or not your audience is there. But even if they are, the numbers in terms of engagement is going to be vastly lower, so can't be a priority. My concern with this would be that, given that that's the case, this becomes a dynamo for Facebook, as the more they become the dominant platform, the less time anyone will spend working to build an audience anywhere else. Possibly Twitter is an exception to this, depending on the publication, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.
haddr 11y ago
I wonder if such result might be a result of some methodological error (not representative sample, some metric calculations biases, click frauds, etc). Otherwise this is rather sad article :(
abpavel 11y ago
Should add "in the English speaking world". Baidu, vkontakte, etc. have their own regional powers.
- CM30 11y ago
  There's actually a few interesting stories there about how Facebook has been beating out quite a few of these regional networks in recent years. For example, they've unseated Mixi in Japan and Cyworld in South Korea: http://www.digitalintheround.com/japan-mixi-facebook/ http://www.digitalintheround.com/japan-mixi-facebook/ http://www.digitalintheround.com/south-korea-cyworld-facebook/ http://www.digitalintheround.com/south-korea-cyworld-faceboo... There are quite a few interesting stories like that, about how certain regionally popular services seem to be losing popularity compared to their international competitors.
  - wodenokoto 11y ago
    > unseated Mixi in Japan I think it is debatable whether it was Facebook or Line that unseated Mixi. Looking at how my Japanese friends use their phones I would say it was Line.
Raphmedia 11y ago
Tell that to tweens and teens. Yes, they are on it, but they don't spend time browsing it. They are social in other apps.
- s3r3nity 11y ago
  Citation Needed...?
  - taylorbuley 11y ago
    Needed but perhaps impossible. An example of the increasing metrics gap between open and closed web. Messaging of various natures seems to be the fastest growing and, in terms of overall transactions, perhaps most popular "social" action yet behind walls it seems the hardest to measure.
  - Raphmedia 11y ago
    Zuckerberg: "coolness is done for us." http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-admits-coolness-is-done-for-us-2013-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-admits-coolne... But really, at that point, it's common knowledge. Kids these days are on Instagram and Snapchat. Take a look at this article. It's really light, but it should refresh a bit into how tweens and teens consume social content: http://www.buzzfeed.com/benrosen/how-to-snapchat-like-the-teens http://www.buzzfeed.com/benrosen/how-to-snapchat-like-the-te...
    - onewaystreet 11y ago
      Facebook owns Instagram. Snapchat is a threat though.
      - cblock811 11y ago
        Snapchat doesn't have a good way to monetize their user base though. It's probably going to be a difficult problem for them, especially with their inflated valuation. More power to them if they can pull it off though.
greg___ 11y ago
I have visited a local community center event website for 15 years. They recently moved over to Facebook. Their feed is public. If I don't have the FB app or am not logged into FB, it's almost as if there is an entire division of losers, sitting around at Facebook cooking up ways to make me login or install the app. From are you a robot unreadable captcha's, to denying the page exists, to limiting the number of posts, limiting readable post content, its ridiculous. Whether they are king or not, all I am ever going to remember them for is taking a gigantic shit over what the Internet is supposed to mean.
- artursapek 11y ago
  I tried viewing the Facebook page for my local goban meetup recently to check on a schedule, and FB put a giant floating translucent white box over the bottom half of my screen with a single "login" button in the middle of it. So I could see there was content below but it was incredibly hard to read. There was not even an "X" button to close it. What it was saying was "join our website or get the hell out". I understand enforcing login for write operations, since it's obviously required, but they really do seem to have no regard for the original ideals of the internet. They're not alone; Quora and others have done similarly stupid shit. These companies are all supposedly started by hackers who love the internet and technology, but it's sad to see capitalism take hold in such an ugly way.
  - wlesieutre 11y ago
    I've found Kill Sticky [1] to be an incredibly useful bookmarket lately. It finds any DOM element with "position: fixed" and deletes it. Wish I didn't need to use it so often, but here we are. Sometimes for annoying popups covering content, sometimes for the sidebar of brightly colored floating social widgets, sometimes just the enormous fixed banner that continues to waste screen real estate after you've scrolled down. I use it a lot on my laptop and haven't tried JS bookmarklets in mobile browsers, but I'd hope that they work by now? [1] https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/ https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/
    - 11y ago
alistproducer2 11y ago
Side note: The conversion of the bar chart y-axis from linear to logarithmic made logarithmic graphs "click" for me. Goes to show you, you can learn something when you least expect it.
sulam 11y ago
I have trouble believing that G+ outstrips Twitter when it comes to social sharing. I think there is likely something at play other than that which isn't captured by this analysis. For instance, Twitter doesn't auto load articles the way G+ and FB do, so perhaps there is a distinction to be made there. At any rate, if G+ was this successful, I think we can all agree Google wouldn't have killed / pivoted it, which means the data is suspect in some way.
- andersen1488 11y ago
  Honestly those numbers are most likely almost entirely automated bots. G+ is popular with content mills to get their page ranking up. Think about it for a moment, do you know ANYONE at all that uses G+ for anything?
  - godshatter 11y ago
    I use it. It's a nice place to follow news organizations and argue with complete strangers in the comment sections of the articles they post. Discussions seem to be less quarrelsome, YMMV. The communities are nice for following hobbyist interests. I don't use it at all for following friends or family.
  - mentaat 11y ago
    g+ doesn't have a write api so everything you see there is posted by a human technically. that said i don't post on g+ but whenever i log in my stream is full of "fresh" content with reasonable engagement. so somebody is using g+ although i don't know a single person that does... could it be that it is more popular outside of US?
  - boyce 11y ago
    It's very popular in particular niches. No serious Ingress player isn't active on G+, for instance.
  - NoGravitas 11y ago
    It appears to me that G+ has found a different niche than Facebook. Facebook is for seeing posts from people you know (mostly people you know but don't see often or at all, like college friends or your aunt). G+ is for seeing posts from people you share interests with. Yes, FB has groups and pages for that kind of thing, but it just seems to have clicked better on G+.
meeper16 11y ago
Google is King. - Gmail 1bil users - Youtube billions - Search - Android - Self Driving cars and the list goes on including an order of magnitude greater in revenue. Facebook is the friendster, geocities the next AOL etc. Google is a real technology company.
- tombert 11y ago
  I don't like Facebook, nor do I have an account, but I disagree somewhat with them not being a "real technology company". Facebook hired Simon Marlow, one of the creators of Haskell, and publishes a lot of research and open-source projects. Cassandra DB, HHVM, React, React-Native and Hack are just a couple examples. They write blog posts about what scales and what does not, and employ a number of post-grad researchers. How are they not a "real" technology company?
  - deftnerd 11y ago
    I agree. It's not just software either. Their work on OpenCompute, which opensources datacenter designs and server designs, has also done really impressive work. Their interest in Occulus shows their appreciation of advances in IO hardware.
    - GauntletWizard 11y ago
      Facebook is where these techs go to die. Facebook has a lot of interest in these projects, and a lot of cool, smart, motivated people working there. But they have no cohesion, no direction, and no way to build on top of one another - Everyone at Facebook is constantly re-inventing the wheel.
  - sofaofthedamned 11y ago
    I love the technology that Facebook make but I hate their day job.
- wodenokoto 11y ago
  While I do think it is interesting to compare Gmail and Youtube to Facebook, I think you are being down voted for bringing in Android and self driving cars. So is Apple now the big Facebook killer?
nickbauman 11y ago
Remember In-Q-Tel, the CIA's VC firm (let that sink in for a moment) was one of the earliest investors in Facebook.
acd 11y ago
This not true. Facebook is not king any more. Do a Google trends comparison and you will find that peak Facebook was in 2013. https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F0glpjll%2C%20%2Fm%2F0h3tm0f%2C%20%2Fm%2F0289n8t%2C%20%2Fm%2F02y1vz&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-2 https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F0glpjll%2C%20...
- jwblackwell 11y ago
  Ironically I need to log in to view this
- 9935c101ab17a66 11y ago
  Your assertion is patently ridiculous.
- catwell 11y ago
  Remove Facebook, add WhatsApp. https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F0glpjll%2C%20%2Fm%2F0h3tm0f%2C%20%2Fm%2F0289n8t%2C%20%2Fm%2F0gwzvs1&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-2 https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F0glpjll%2C%20... Both Instagram and WhatsApp belong to Facebook.
- dennisnedry 11y ago
  Even by your chart, FB is still much higher than the other networks.
- dntrkv 11y ago
  How is it not still king? Your link clearly shows Facebook is still way ahead of any competitors.
- prostoalex 11y ago
  This is based on Google searches. How many users are getting to an app on their phone via a Google search?
- okc 11y ago
  I dont't search for facebook. Its hardwired into my brain. I would like to think FB has had its day. But globally, and for different age groups, its probably just begun. - Even if it is declining in meaning for the t(w)eens and generally those over-exposed to it. I cant see any of it developing any further, augmented style or by making it business relevant - these things aren't anywhere as powerful as its basic concept. It is often easier than email to use, so perhaps their is some mileage in a startup that takes a new angle on email - rather than snapchat being the obvious 'next thing'. Its also kinda cool as a news feed of interesting memes, but once again - this could be done better. FB was always contrary to the ideals of the internet, but thats why people like it; FB imposes a protocol of communication, unlike myspace which was all about being an individual expressing yourself - people seem to like a forced top down order to expression.. (twitter being the ultimate useless expression of this) If FB wants you to log in, its probabaly because everyone on FB prefers it that way. of course, usually everyone is wrong. I would liken FB to the roman empire, it doesnt have any one big downfall, just a gradual decline exploited by various factions of smaller powers. For the internet, the joy of all of this, is that in the end, freedom, choice, and exchange of information win out. right? right??
brador 11y ago
People underestimate how quickly Facebook could be overtaken. Look at Whatsapp and ask yourself what if Facebook hadn't purchased them when they did? It is inevitable that someday something will fly under the radar or an owner will be unwilling to sell.
- ma2rten 11y ago
  Like snapchat?
  - minionslave 11y ago
    They need a desktop version
    - Throwaway23412 11y ago
      Why? If anything, Snapchat's success shows that they don't need a desktop version. Mobile usage in the U.S. now exceeds desktop usage. I'm having a hard time believing that anyone on the Snapchat team is stressing out about having a desktop version.
xufi 11y ago
There was a time when Twitter wanted to be king and Snapchat and well Fb sure dominated them all
ypeterholmes 11y ago
Seems remiss not to include reddit in this analysis no?
danbruc 11y ago
If nothing unexpected happens, Facebook will be dead by 2020 [1]. [1] https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=facebook https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=facebook
- joering2 11y ago
  Interesting. What is this based of off?
  - danbruc 11y ago
    It's the normalized search volume for the term »facebook« on Google. It is not too straight forward to interpret but I thought about it for some time and I am still convinced it is a pretty good indicator for Facebook's future. For example users switching from desktop browsers to apps will no longer go to facebook.com by searching for »facebook« in the address bar and therefore lower the search volume. On the other hand people searching for solutions for issues with Facebook should still track the size of the user base. The same holds for developers interested in Facebook APIs, authors researching Facebook for articles and so on. You can almost always come up with explanations why the search volume should go down over time, developers already knowing the APIs, Facebook maturing and therefore causing less and less issues for users, users maturing and therefore being better able to deal with issues without searching and so on. But if you look at similar cases like MySpace [1], Google+ [2], ICQ [3], the German StudiVZ and MeinVZ [4], the search volume on Google was always a really good indicator for the fate of those platforms and I don't have enough convincing arguments to believe that Facebook manages to counter this trend. [1] https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=myspace https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=myspace [2] https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=google%2B https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=google%2B [3] https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=icq https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=icq [4] https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=studivz%2C%20meinvz https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=studivz%2C%20meinvz
    - what_ever 11y ago
      Well as people move towards using mobile and apps more and more, wouldn't they search Facebook on Google less and less?
chrischen 11y ago
Facebook is still living mostly off its network effects. It's still not King in many Foregn markets, and I'm not even counting China since they are explicitly blocked there. So they don't necessarily have product superiority, just network effects.
- acchow 11y ago
  Some would say the network is the product.
skywhopper 11y ago
The selection of websites listed is sort of weird. Buzzfeed I get but the others aren't high on my radar. I'm guessing the graphs would look different with different websites to analyze. But more than that, this analysis sort of presents a tautology. Yes, Facebook is king of Facebook-style sharing. No one is surprised. What, you say Pinterest doesn't have a ton of National Geographic articles shared compared to Facebook? Not a surprise, given the nature of Pinterest. Twitter is also not the same sort of social network. LinkedIn? Google+? These are not the same sorts of sites at all. Meanwhile, the article totally ignores Tumblr, Snapchat, and who knows what other sites I know nothing about. In summary, Facebook has won at being Facebook. Other sites have different purposes, and their users use them differently.
- skewart 11y ago
  I had the same thought. It was a bizarre selection of media companies and other "social" sites. It seems like either naive, amateur analysis, or else they cherry picked the data to make a popular perception of fb look as dramatically true as possible. I'm inclined to give their integrity the benefit of the doubt and assume they just didn't really think this one through.
Animats 11y ago
From an advertiser perpective, there's Google, there's Facebook, and there's everybody else. Ignoring everybody else doesn't seem to reduce sales.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dredmorbius 11y ago
While measurement, methodology, and focus were different (my goal was seeking intelligent discussion online), the results may be of interest. I ran Google searches across multiple domains representing major social media networks, publications, and a few other classes of sites including academic institutions, government, and various foreign TLDs. Search terms were names from the Foreign Policy Top 100 Global Thinkers list (selected as representative of more intellectual dicussion), the arbitrarily selected text string "Kim Kardashian" as negative indicator, and a search for the word "this" (a common English word) to get a proxy for total English-language content on a given site or domain. Facebook dominated by total count, though s/n as represented by the FP:KK index (see link) was highest at Metafilter, with Reddit doing admirably. Blogs though had very nearly as much content as FB and generally far more length and relevance. My read is that there's an untapped market for meaningful discussion on blogs from whoever manages to solve the problems of discoverability, discussion, relevance, reputation, and spam. https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/tracking_the_conversation_fp_global_100_thinkers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/trackin...
erikb 11y ago
I think this kind of analysis is not worth much. Not that it was done badly (I'm not good enough to judge that). In every market you have two kinds of profitable companies: The market leader who owns the huge thing. And you have niches. Both of them can be very profitable but in different ways. HN is certainly no social leader, but I would consider it a huge success. And while it may not even make money in a direct way, it's a huge part of the success of the brand YCombinator. Are these scraps? I don't think so. In fact, given the choice, I'd rather work at HN than at FB. I'd rather own shares of YC as well (in that regard YC may even be too big for what I like). And as you can see right now, I'd rather talk to people here than on FB as well.
Hoasi 11y ago
King, yes, for the time being maybe; yet I can't help but think Facebook's presence / dominance will wane eventually.

144 points by etr71115 11y ago

The inability to monitor their whole network for scam advertising might cripple facebook's dominance as their main revenue source becomes less trusting but the scale of their operations relies on that consistent revenue: More on the ad scams: http://www.buzzfeed.com/sapna/say-no-to-the-dress http://www.buzzfeed.com/sapna/say-no-to-the-dress

55555 11y ago
I doubt if, if only because the entire web and even offline world is equally filled with ad scams too. Go look at anything advertised via taboola our outbrain. :-/

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

petewailes 11y ago

It's an interesting piece, but I'd be more interested in analysis looking at the why behind that. What is it about the audience on the site, and the way the sites are presenting their content that is driving the non-FB sharing? Obviously this would need to be done with more sites than just those here. However, for a quick analysis, I nosed around three... Billboard have Facebook and Twitter sharing buttons on their articles, but not G+, so it's fair to assume that the G+ sharing is going on on the G+ platform, not from the site itself. Similarly, hovering over any image on TipHero presents share buttons for Facebook and Pinterest, and the bottom of their articles present a huge Share on Facebook button. However, no Twitter share button means they're getting nothing from that, and presumably not interacting in any way on G+ either. There's a similar story again with Bleacher Report, which has Facebook and Twitter buttons (but interestingly no Twitter shares - possibly the wrong audience?), the same for every image, and Facebook, Twitter and G+ share buttons at the base of each article. I think the takeaways from this are, Facebook is massive and cannot be ignored if you're publishing content, whilst everything else is dependent on whether or not your audience is there. But even if they are, the numbers in terms of engagement is going to be vastly lower, so can't be a priority. My concern with this would be that, given that that's the case, this becomes a dynamo for Facebook, as the more they become the dominant platform, the less time anyone will spend working to build an audience anywhere else. Possibly Twitter is an exception to this, depending on the publication, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

haddr 11y ago

I wonder if such result might be a result of some methodological error (not representative sample, some metric calculations biases, click frauds, etc). Otherwise this is rather sad article :(

abpavel 11y ago

Should add "in the English speaking world". Baidu, vkontakte, etc. have their own regional powers.

CM30 11y ago
There's actually a few interesting stories there about how Facebook has been beating out quite a few of these regional networks in recent years. For example, they've unseated Mixi in Japan and Cyworld in South Korea: http://www.digitalintheround.com/japan-mixi-facebook/ http://www.digitalintheround.com/japan-mixi-facebook/ http://www.digitalintheround.com/south-korea-cyworld-facebook/ http://www.digitalintheround.com/south-korea-cyworld-faceboo... There are quite a few interesting stories like that, about how certain regionally popular services seem to be losing popularity compared to their international competitors.
- wodenokoto 11y ago
  > unseated Mixi in Japan I think it is debatable whether it was Facebook or Line that unseated Mixi. Looking at how my Japanese friends use their phones I would say it was Line.

Raphmedia 11y ago

Tell that to tweens and teens. Yes, they are on it, but they don't spend time browsing it. They are social in other apps.

s3r3nity 11y ago
Citation Needed...?
- taylorbuley 11y ago
  Needed but perhaps impossible. An example of the increasing metrics gap between open and closed web. Messaging of various natures seems to be the fastest growing and, in terms of overall transactions, perhaps most popular "social" action yet behind walls it seems the hardest to measure.
- Raphmedia 11y ago
  Zuckerberg: "coolness is done for us." http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-admits-coolness-is-done-for-us-2013-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-admits-coolne... But really, at that point, it's common knowledge. Kids these days are on Instagram and Snapchat. Take a look at this article. It's really light, but it should refresh a bit into how tweens and teens consume social content: http://www.buzzfeed.com/benrosen/how-to-snapchat-like-the-teens http://www.buzzfeed.com/benrosen/how-to-snapchat-like-the-te...
  - onewaystreet 11y ago
    Facebook owns Instagram. Snapchat is a threat though.
    - cblock811 11y ago
      Snapchat doesn't have a good way to monetize their user base though. It's probably going to be a difficult problem for them, especially with their inflated valuation. More power to them if they can pull it off though.

greg___ 11y ago

I have visited a local community center event website for 15 years. They recently moved over to Facebook. Their feed is public. If I don't have the FB app or am not logged into FB, it's almost as if there is an entire division of losers, sitting around at Facebook cooking up ways to make me login or install the app. From are you a robot unreadable captcha's, to denying the page exists, to limiting the number of posts, limiting readable post content, its ridiculous. Whether they are king or not, all I am ever going to remember them for is taking a gigantic shit over what the Internet is supposed to mean.

artursapek 11y ago
I tried viewing the Facebook page for my local goban meetup recently to check on a schedule, and FB put a giant floating translucent white box over the bottom half of my screen with a single "login" button in the middle of it. So I could see there was content below but it was incredibly hard to read. There was not even an "X" button to close it. What it was saying was "join our website or get the hell out". I understand enforcing login for write operations, since it's obviously required, but they really do seem to have no regard for the original ideals of the internet. They're not alone; Quora and others have done similarly stupid shit. These companies are all supposedly started by hackers who love the internet and technology, but it's sad to see capitalism take hold in such an ugly way.
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  I've found Kill Sticky [1] to be an incredibly useful bookmarket lately. It finds any DOM element with "position: fixed" and deletes it. Wish I didn't need to use it so often, but here we are. Sometimes for annoying popups covering content, sometimes for the sidebar of brightly colored floating social widgets, sometimes just the enormous fixed banner that continues to waste screen real estate after you've scrolled down. I use it a lot on my laptop and haven't tried JS bookmarklets in mobile browsers, but I'd hope that they work by now? [1] https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/ https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/
  - 11y ago

alistproducer2 11y ago

Side note: The conversion of the bar chart y-axis from linear to logarithmic made logarithmic graphs "click" for me. Goes to show you, you can learn something when you least expect it.

sulam 11y ago

I have trouble believing that G+ outstrips Twitter when it comes to social sharing. I think there is likely something at play other than that which isn't captured by this analysis. For instance, Twitter doesn't auto load articles the way G+ and FB do, so perhaps there is a distinction to be made there. At any rate, if G+ was this successful, I think we can all agree Google wouldn't have killed / pivoted it, which means the data is suspect in some way.

andersen1488 11y ago
Honestly those numbers are most likely almost entirely automated bots. G+ is popular with content mills to get their page ranking up. Think about it for a moment, do you know ANYONE at all that uses G+ for anything?
- godshatter 11y ago
  I use it. It's a nice place to follow news organizations and argue with complete strangers in the comment sections of the articles they post. Discussions seem to be less quarrelsome, YMMV. The communities are nice for following hobbyist interests. I don't use it at all for following friends or family.
- mentaat 11y ago
  g+ doesn't have a write api so everything you see there is posted by a human technically. that said i don't post on g+ but whenever i log in my stream is full of "fresh" content with reasonable engagement. so somebody is using g+ although i don't know a single person that does... could it be that it is more popular outside of US?
- boyce 11y ago
  It's very popular in particular niches. No serious Ingress player isn't active on G+, for instance.
- NoGravitas 11y ago
  It appears to me that G+ has found a different niche than Facebook. Facebook is for seeing posts from people you know (mostly people you know but don't see often or at all, like college friends or your aunt). G+ is for seeing posts from people you share interests with. Yes, FB has groups and pages for that kind of thing, but it just seems to have clicked better on G+.

meeper16 11y ago

Google is King. - Gmail 1bil users - Youtube billions - Search - Android - Self Driving cars and the list goes on including an order of magnitude greater in revenue. Facebook is the friendster, geocities the next AOL etc. Google is a real technology company.

tombert 11y ago
I don't like Facebook, nor do I have an account, but I disagree somewhat with them not being a "real technology company". Facebook hired Simon Marlow, one of the creators of Haskell, and publishes a lot of research and open-source projects. Cassandra DB, HHVM, React, React-Native and Hack are just a couple examples. They write blog posts about what scales and what does not, and employ a number of post-grad researchers. How are they not a "real" technology company?
- deftnerd 11y ago
  I agree. It's not just software either. Their work on OpenCompute, which opensources datacenter designs and server designs, has also done really impressive work. Their interest in Occulus shows their appreciation of advances in IO hardware.
  - GauntletWizard 11y ago
    Facebook is where these techs go to die. Facebook has a lot of interest in these projects, and a lot of cool, smart, motivated people working there. But they have no cohesion, no direction, and no way to build on top of one another - Everyone at Facebook is constantly re-inventing the wheel.
- sofaofthedamned 11y ago
  I love the technology that Facebook make but I hate their day job.
wodenokoto 11y ago
While I do think it is interesting to compare Gmail and Youtube to Facebook, I think you are being down voted for bringing in Android and self driving cars. So is Apple now the big Facebook killer?

nickbauman 11y ago

Remember In-Q-Tel, the CIA's VC firm (let that sink in for a moment) was one of the earliest investors in Facebook.

acd 11y ago

This not true. Facebook is not king any more. Do a Google trends comparison and you will find that peak Facebook was in 2013. https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F0glpjll%2C%20%2Fm%2F0h3tm0f%2C%20%2Fm%2F0289n8t%2C%20%2Fm%2F02y1vz&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-2 https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F0glpjll%2C%20...

jwblackwell 11y ago
Ironically I need to log in to view this
9935c101ab17a66 11y ago
Your assertion is patently ridiculous.
catwell 11y ago
Remove Facebook, add WhatsApp. https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F0glpjll%2C%20%2Fm%2F0h3tm0f%2C%20%2Fm%2F0289n8t%2C%20%2Fm%2F0gwzvs1&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-2 https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F0glpjll%2C%20... Both Instagram and WhatsApp belong to Facebook.
dennisnedry 11y ago
Even by your chart, FB is still much higher than the other networks.
dntrkv 11y ago
How is it not still king? Your link clearly shows Facebook is still way ahead of any competitors.
prostoalex 11y ago
This is based on Google searches. How many users are getting to an app on their phone via a Google search?
okc 11y ago
I dont't search for facebook. Its hardwired into my brain. I would like to think FB has had its day. But globally, and for different age groups, its probably just begun. - Even if it is declining in meaning for the t(w)eens and generally those over-exposed to it. I cant see any of it developing any further, augmented style or by making it business relevant - these things aren't anywhere as powerful as its basic concept. It is often easier than email to use, so perhaps their is some mileage in a startup that takes a new angle on email - rather than snapchat being the obvious 'next thing'. Its also kinda cool as a news feed of interesting memes, but once again - this could be done better. FB was always contrary to the ideals of the internet, but thats why people like it; FB imposes a protocol of communication, unlike myspace which was all about being an individual expressing yourself - people seem to like a forced top down order to expression.. (twitter being the ultimate useless expression of this) If FB wants you to log in, its probabaly because everyone on FB prefers it that way. of course, usually everyone is wrong. I would liken FB to the roman empire, it doesnt have any one big downfall, just a gradual decline exploited by various factions of smaller powers. For the internet, the joy of all of this, is that in the end, freedom, choice, and exchange of information win out. right? right??

brador 11y ago

People underestimate how quickly Facebook could be overtaken. Look at Whatsapp and ask yourself what if Facebook hadn't purchased them when they did? It is inevitable that someday something will fly under the radar or an owner will be unwilling to sell.

ma2rten 11y ago
Like snapchat?
- minionslave 11y ago
  They need a desktop version
  - Throwaway23412 11y ago
    Why? If anything, Snapchat's success shows that they don't need a desktop version. Mobile usage in the U.S. now exceeds desktop usage. I'm having a hard time believing that anyone on the Snapchat team is stressing out about having a desktop version.

xufi 11y ago

There was a time when Twitter wanted to be king and Snapchat and well Fb sure dominated them all

ypeterholmes 11y ago

Seems remiss not to include reddit in this analysis no?

danbruc 11y ago

If nothing unexpected happens, Facebook will be dead by 2020 [1]. [1] https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=facebook https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=facebook

joering2 11y ago
Interesting. What is this based of off?
- danbruc 11y ago
  It's the normalized search volume for the term »facebook« on Google. It is not too straight forward to interpret but I thought about it for some time and I am still convinced it is a pretty good indicator for Facebook's future. For example users switching from desktop browsers to apps will no longer go to facebook.com by searching for »facebook« in the address bar and therefore lower the search volume. On the other hand people searching for solutions for issues with Facebook should still track the size of the user base. The same holds for developers interested in Facebook APIs, authors researching Facebook for articles and so on. You can almost always come up with explanations why the search volume should go down over time, developers already knowing the APIs, Facebook maturing and therefore causing less and less issues for users, users maturing and therefore being better able to deal with issues without searching and so on. But if you look at similar cases like MySpace [1], Google+ [2], ICQ [3], the German StudiVZ and MeinVZ [4], the search volume on Google was always a really good indicator for the fate of those platforms and I don't have enough convincing arguments to believe that Facebook manages to counter this trend. [1] https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=myspace https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=myspace [2] https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=google%2B https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=google%2B [3] https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=icq https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=icq [4] https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=studivz%2C%20meinvz https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=studivz%2C%20meinvz
  - what_ever 11y ago
    Well as people move towards using mobile and apps more and more, wouldn't they search Facebook on Google less and less?

chrischen 11y ago

Facebook is still living mostly off its network effects. It's still not King in many Foregn markets, and I'm not even counting China since they are explicitly blocked there. So they don't necessarily have product superiority, just network effects.

acchow 11y ago
Some would say the network is the product.

skywhopper 11y ago

The selection of websites listed is sort of weird. Buzzfeed I get but the others aren't high on my radar. I'm guessing the graphs would look different with different websites to analyze. But more than that, this analysis sort of presents a tautology. Yes, Facebook is king of Facebook-style sharing. No one is surprised. What, you say Pinterest doesn't have a ton of National Geographic articles shared compared to Facebook? Not a surprise, given the nature of Pinterest. Twitter is also not the same sort of social network. LinkedIn? Google+? These are not the same sorts of sites at all. Meanwhile, the article totally ignores Tumblr, Snapchat, and who knows what other sites I know nothing about. In summary, Facebook has won at being Facebook. Other sites have different purposes, and their users use them differently.

skewart 11y ago
I had the same thought. It was a bizarre selection of media companies and other "social" sites. It seems like either naive, amateur analysis, or else they cherry picked the data to make a popular perception of fb look as dramatically true as possible. I'm inclined to give their integrity the benefit of the doubt and assume they just didn't really think this one through.

Animats 11y ago

From an advertiser perpective, there's Google, there's Facebook, and there's everybody else. Ignoring everybody else doesn't seem to reduce sales.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

dredmorbius 11y ago

While measurement, methodology, and focus were different (my goal was seeking intelligent discussion online), the results may be of interest. I ran Google searches across multiple domains representing major social media networks, publications, and a few other classes of sites including academic institutions, government, and various foreign TLDs. Search terms were names from the Foreign Policy Top 100 Global Thinkers list (selected as representative of more intellectual dicussion), the arbitrarily selected text string "Kim Kardashian" as negative indicator, and a search for the word "this" (a common English word) to get a proxy for total English-language content on a given site or domain. Facebook dominated by total count, though s/n as represented by the FP:KK index (see link) was highest at Metafilter, with Reddit doing admirably. Blogs though had very nearly as much content as FB and generally far more length and relevance. My read is that there's an untapped market for meaningful discussion on blogs from whoever manages to solve the problems of discoverability, discussion, relevance, reputation, and spam. https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/tracking_the_conversation_fp_global_100_thinkers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/trackin...

erikb 11y ago

I think this kind of analysis is not worth much. Not that it was done badly (I'm not good enough to judge that). In every market you have two kinds of profitable companies: The market leader who owns the huge thing. And you have niches. Both of them can be very profitable but in different ways. HN is certainly no social leader, but I would consider it a huge success. And while it may not even make money in a direct way, it's a huge part of the success of the brand YCombinator. Are these scraps? I don't think so. In fact, given the choice, I'd rather work at HN than at FB. I'd rather own shares of YC as well (in that regard YC may even be too big for what I like). And as you can see right now, I'd rather talk to people here than on FB as well.

Hoasi 11y ago

King, yes, for the time being maybe; yet I can't help but think Facebook's presence / dominance will wane eventually.