9 ms·

Facebook bends the rules of audience engagement to its advantage

114 points by hvo 10y ago

necessity 10y ago
How is this news?
- adrenalinelol 10y ago
  Apparently Facebook is so good at user engagement, they can get people to spend time talking about how much time is spent on the platform ;)
arcticfox 10y ago
> As a company spokeswoman, Jessie Baker, told me: “The time people spend on our site is a good measure of whether we’re delivering value to them.” Eh, the same argument could be made by Philip Morris or a casino: "The time people spend using our products is a good measure of whether we're delivering value to them."
- Aelinsaar 10y ago
  Exactly. Usage patterns and "deriving value" seem like very different beasts.
  - cryptoz 10y ago
    Yes; in fact, this statement would have made a lot more sense: > "The time people spend using our products is a good measure of whether they're delivering value to us."
    - Aelinsaar 10y ago
      Now that's a little ominous, but yeah absolutely. It also fits with the "consumer as product" viewpoint.
      - cryptoz 10y ago
        Isn't the only logical endpoint for Facebook to become a VR world where we all spend 100% of our time? That's what a forever-continuing revenue increase would create, right? And that's exactly how the incentive structures exist right now. I don't really like that society places such high emphasis on structures that create dystopias.
        wallacoloo 10y ago
        Interestingly, I think there may be a point beyond which Facebook begins to lose revenue as users spend more time on their site. Think about it - their revenue comes from turn-over. They don't make money because you spend time on facebook - they make money because you spend time/money elsewhere, and they know enough about you to encourage you to spend more money on other people's products or otherwise sell their knowledge of you to people who can make those sales. At some point wherein Facebook occupies an exceptional amount of a user's time - when it becomes the only product a user wants - Facebook won't be able to sell you anything. At this point, the company would probably need to find other ways to profit besides advertising. But I don't think we'll ever get anywhere near the point at which an increase in FB use time corresponds to a decrease in advertiser value anyway.
        intrasight 10y ago
        you are neglecting in-app purchases
        newjersey 10y ago
        At some point, time spent on Facebook will start competing against time spent playing candy crush saga.
        taneq 10y ago
        On the plus side, beyond a certain point Facebook is going to have to start investing heavily in life-extension technology for their users, so as to continue increasing the time that users can use Facebook.
  - cb18 10y ago
    Well, value in sating a compulsive or addictive behavior, but not all values are equal.
    - arcticfox 10y ago
      Exactly, I agree. That's why I didn't disagree with the statement, just qualified it with more examples to illustrate your point.
    - rhizome 10y ago
      That so many exceptions and alternative interpretations are possible makes "value" a meaningless term. Perhaps some day reporters won't go MEGO[1] when hearing it. 1. https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/mego/ https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/mego/
      - cb18 10y ago
        Value is just like a variable, it is a place holder for what matters. And the value of the value can vary depending on the person or the situation. It could be a positive or a negative value, a value of high importance or minimal importance. Assigning something a value just basically means you're not entirely disinterested in it.
        rhizome 10y ago
        Thanks. Well said.
  - cwilkes 10y ago
    At a "big data" talk Yahoo gave one of the keynotes where they asked which one of the two email samples had the "most engagement" Surprise surprise it was the one with the confusing text on it -- people were clicking on it to see what the heck it meant. But to the Yahoo guys that meant that email was better as it got more clicks. And I suppose it is better if that's how your bonus is constructed.
    - coupdetaco 10y ago
      No really. Send slightly jacked-up canned emails. Gravitas!
- AznHisoka 10y ago
  Delivering value could just mean giving them dopamine in the short term. That's value.
- tn13 10y ago
  I think Philip Morris would not be wrong here. The problem here is the difference in values that individuals have. A lot of us might think of wasting time of Facebook or Casino is a bad idea but for many people it would not be the case. Facebook is essentially competing with Snapchat, Youtube, TV for time and if Facebook wins it means they are offering more value than others. People aren't going to read more books or get new skills if Facebook deliberately rations their user's time.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - natrius 10y ago
    Yes, there are lots of satisfying addictions competing for our time. That doesn't absolve any of them for the harm they cause. Anyone selling ads is trying to addict you to get you to see more ads. It's immoral.
    - tn13 10y ago
      I don't find it immoral.
- panic 10y ago
  This talk "Is Anything Worth Maximizing?" is worth a watch: http://nxhx.org/maximizing/ http://nxhx.org/maximizing/
  - zerotimer 10y ago
    That link doesn't work. Can you verify? Edit: Its working now.
- gumby 10y ago
  You have an excellent nose for appropriate metaphors. That's awesome!
- caylus 10y ago
  Or the DMV. "The time people spend at our office is a good measure of whether we're delivering value to them."
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - twelvechairs 10y ago
    Or a hospital.
    - PunchTornado 10y ago
      or a cemetery
      - goldenkey 10y ago
        Way to get morbid HN... but yeah. Anything that distracts from original purpose is a tar pit for time. I certainly hope I don't go into a cemetery willing and end up staying...
        DyslexicAtheist 10y ago
        love the way this escalated :)
- bko 10y ago
  Some people do enjoy smoking and/or gambling. Not everyone is a victim being exploited
  - Sone7 10y ago
    Some people do enjoy heroin and/or being a slave. Not everyone is a victim being exploited. In other words, I really don't know what you're trying to add to the conversation.
    - bko 10y ago
      Just because you might find the experience mundane or meaningless and you may not be able to fathom why anyone would willfully use such a product doesn't mean that the users are being exploited. It's very condescending and offensive when you compare casual users of a social network that you may not like to real exploitation through chemical dependence or abuse.
  - danhak 10y ago
    And some people are legitimately addicted and unable to stop despite their sincere desire. In many cases, companies engineer products and services to be as addictive as possible. The techniques used by casinos, for instance, are well known. This is not an argument for regulation, prohibition or anything like that. Merely a rebuttal to the falsehood that nobody is being "exploited" by such companies and that "value" is being created. In many cases value is being destroyed.
    - koolba 10y ago
      At the end of the day society has to decide, are we going to let people make there own decisions or are we going to decide for them? It might very from topic to topic (ex: tobacco vs. unhealthy foods), but it's one definitive answer per topic.
      - danhak 10y ago
        Right, but as I stated above that debate is out of scope. I'm just disputing the notion that fostering addiction amounts to "creating value."
- nihonde 10y ago
  I will never understand why advertising businesses (and that's what Facebook is) fail to see their fundamental value proposition: ROI on ad spend. Jessie Baker's comment fails in two respects: (1) eyeballs and engagement time is not a "good measure" without correlating to ROI for advertisers, and (2) FB's value proposition is not aimed at users, but rather at advertisers.
  - brandnewlow 10y ago
    ROI-based measurement is the only sane way to measure the effectiveness of a marketing channel. But if ad companies are measured based on ROI, then they can be easily compared against other channels. That's the last thing any ad company wants. So to make a great deal of money as a marketing channel you need to invent a new metric, one that your company is very good at delivering on. Then you convince the market that metric is one they should care about. It's no different from how SaaS companies regularly invent new "spaces" that enterprises need solutions for (marketing automation, lead scoring, video marketing etc) or even how real estate agents in major metro areas regularly rename neighborhoods and redraw area boundaries. If you can make the market, define a new reality that your customers have to step into, you increase the odds that your customers will measure success in a way that favors your strengths.
    - nihonde 10y ago
      You're 100% right. I will never understand why ad spend is as high as it is when the customer never proves ROI. It made sense when ads were cultural background noise, in magazines and other media that had no way of providing feedback on conversions, etc. But we've crossed the rubicon, and yet ad channels still suck at ROI for the perverse reasons that you correctly mention. At least some channels, like App Stores for example, offer something like end-to-end metrics for placements.
- rhizome 10y ago
  "Value" is pretty much the most banal dimension possible. Total red flag euphemism.
- kelukelugames 10y ago
  I would be happier if I spent less time on facebook. It is a drug for me.
wfactor 10y ago
Sadly this estimate seems on point. I think the jump in time spent is largely because of Instagram though - there are many who check both daily
jheriko 10y ago
Why is this remotely bad? > “They’re doing a tremendous job of finding ways to keep people on the site” Could also be phrased "Facebook provides such great value to its unpaying customers that they are willing to spend 50 minutes per day interacting with their services" ... a spin/PR/sales person could word it better I'm sure
- devishard 10y ago
  Please don't feed the turd-polishers.
electic 10y ago
This should be a wake up call. This site really doesn't deliver anything of value. It doesn't really make you more social and it doesn't really connect you to people in the real world. So basically you spend 16,800 minutes a year on Facebook. That is 11 days of your life lost a year.
- zappo2938 10y ago
  I spend 50 minutes a day on Hacker News.
  - n1l 10y ago
    let's not talk about reddit then
  - intrasight 10y ago
    Hacker News is for me a news and discussion portal. Reddit is something that might show up from a Google search. I block most of the distracting internet during the day - except FB and HN - so of course those two get the majority of my allocated distracted time. I should measure it, but I'd not be at all surprised if they each got an hour a day.
- Mendenhall 10y ago
  Oh it surely delivers value for the creator:) many are very happy to get data mined and manipulated and dont see how it could be a problem at all.
- lazzlazzlazz 10y ago
  I get value from Facebook just like I get value from Hacker News, Reddit, Messenger, etc. It literally helps me connect to people in the real world - I just discovered Tycho's new album through there, planned a trip to a festival with friends there, just filled up my weekend, and discovered a new area I'm going to go rock climbing. If you are getting no value from Facebook, you're probably not using it correctly - which you can change.
  - 10y ago
wslh 10y ago
I suggest you to read Momo by Michael Ende[1], it is basically about this topic. Obviously, not only Facebook is guilty. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_(novel)
- nosuchthing 10y ago
  Attention Deficit Disorder By Cefte The afternoon sun angled through a tear in the tent. Ma Bao-Zhi grunted, then shifted his face towards the shade and screwed up his eyes. In the absence of light, the retinal burns from his always-on pupil-tracking HUD-halo danced before his field of vision. He sat up and stretched. It was a new day. The corner of his visual field that was perpetually occupied by the DistroNet feed blinked. A major announcement was incoming from the most influential association of experts that he had ever been a part of: The Council Of Two Million With A Remit Of Everything. The upstart replacement of last year's not-hegemon, the Coven of Eight to the Seven; Masters of Knowledge, the Council had, yesterday, consisted of just over 50.3% of the surviving inhabitants of what had once been Taiwan SAR. However, as he scanned the headlines, he noted that an overnight disputation on the meaning of Buddha-nature had resulted in nearly two hundred being purged from the membership roster, and, more importantly, from the Council's ReDistroList. Ma had never posted to any discussion regarding Buddha-nature, for which he was now extremely thankful. Attention Distribution Cannot Be Gamed, he though, nodding to himself. It was a mantra every child knew, and it was obviously true. 'Gaming' would imply an illegitimate practice, and since the attention economy was inherently legitimate, any practice that arose thereof could not be 'gaming'. The use of randomly-assigned attention redistribution lists to strengthen the network-influence of an association of experts was one of the most powerful practices there was - without it, no modern association of experts could compete. With the saccadic grace of long practice, his pupils flipped to the updated, slightly smaller ReDistroList, and settled down to start his highly-encouraged ten hours of daily network-reinforcement. Ten hours - ten icons - each one painstakingly designed by the expert it represented. The Coven of Eight to the Seven had highly encouraged eight hours of ReDistroList attention, but the Council's superior attention ethic had led to an expert association network both wider and deeper in links, and thus, far more influential. The Coven defined their area of expertise too narrowly, and left themselves open to a ratio attack. It was a trivial task for the Council to dial down the attention ratio of key knowledge industries overnight, leaving the Coven rudderless and sinking. Ma had been a third-quartile defector, holding out longer than most; his punishment was to enter the Council with six month's half-ratio deficit. Half as likely to be randomly assigned to other experts ReDistroList, he counted himself lucky - the fourth quartile had been exiled entirely. As is, he was comfortably off in a deficit camp outside Taibao. Ma shook himself; introspection was an audience of one. The first icon belonged to Tracy Liu: 166kg, pink highlights and moderator by acclaim of a yaoi fandom for the ancient classic, Glengarry Glen Ross. The minutes ticked by, and as the completion bar for the first icon flipped over into green and Tracy's hand-drawn icon faded from sight - young Al Pacino gently cupping young Jack Lemmon's testicles on a bed of index cards - Ma decided that he would treat himself with an hour of free attention. He rucked the covers back from his legs and withdrew his 75MHz future-proofed laptop from its pouch. Minutes later, halfway through the boot-sequence, Ma heard the unmistakable whirring of a Bother-Gyro. He dug rapidly through the contents of the tent for the thick blanket he'd found the week before, to muffle the fans of the laptop, but the blanket had been redistributed. It was too late anyway: the Bother-Gyro's tracking software had heard the fans. "Go away!" shouted Ma. < Hello Friend And How Are You And Woo! > The Bother-Gyro hovered just out of Ma's reach. "滚蛋!" < Would You Like A Comestible?! Marmalade Is In This Week! > "Fuck off." Bother-Gyros were increasingly common, flying over the water from the Penghu Collective, and Ma had tangled with them before, when he was a high-ratio member of the Coven: an attractive target. The Collective were Min-speakers, and the language barrier was starving them of culture-based attention, and forcing them to desperate measures. He knew that while they would advertise to any moving object, their main purpose was to gain the attention of the victim. Even compared to the average camp member, Ma's influence ratio was low... "Hey! Bot! There's a high-ratio family just over that wall! You can bother them all at once! Think of the attention gains!" Unfortunately for Ma, the Bother-Gyro was also running off a 75MHz chip, which did not support voice recognition. Even more unfortunately, what little resources it did have to bring to bear were mainly concentrated on measuring the direction of gaze of the victim, and Ma's gaze had briefly moved from the Gyro to the wall he was gesturing at. The Gyro aimed a module at the RFID tag on Ma's halo. pffffsss "Fuck!" Pepper-spray will catch anyone's attention. Whilst Ma rolled around in the dirt, the Bother-Gyro gently settled on the ground next to him, conserving battery. Proximity was worth less attention than direct eye-contact, but it was still worth something. After a minute, the database updated the Gyro on Ma's uninspiring attention value, and it buzzed off in search of less deficient prey. ---- continued at ( http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3462638&userid=0&perpage=40&highlight=&pagenumber=28#post400702769 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=346... )
ojbyrne 10y ago
I wonder how much of an overlap there is with "waiting in line." because that's a big use case for me.
pmalynin 10y ago
Yeah not gonna happen. Literally the only thing I use it for is chat.
x0054 10y ago
While people are spending more and more time on FB, I find it that there is less and less original content uploaded. It's all likes and re-shares.
- vvpan 10y ago
  It's reverberation chamber.
- nosuchthing 10y ago
  It's a 'go to' reflex, like TV.
- jsm386 10y ago
  Facebook is actively trying to deal with that truth: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-07/facebook-said-to-face-decline-in-people-posting-personal-content http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-07/facebook-s...
brianstorms 10y ago
Facebook gets about 10 minutes of my time each day, thanks to heavily muting many friends' posts, FB Purity, and uBlock. Meanwhile, Tesla has 120 minutes of my time each day. I'm fine with that.
- Mendenhall 10y ago
  I am not someone who uses facebook, if you would not mind could you explain briefly what you mean by "muting friends posts"?
  - koala_advert 10y ago
    You can "unfollow" people that you have added, so that their posts no longer show up on your news feed. You still have them added as a friend, you just don't see their posts without visiting their profile page.
xirdstl 10y ago
That includes Messenger. Is Messenger just IM? If so, that estimate makes more sense. Do they serve ads there too?
kristopolous 10y ago
Knowing it's within Facebook's financial interest to self-report this unverifiable number as high as they can, I wonder what's included. Are they only including when a user has the mobile app or browser window open and is engaging with the content or are they measuring the total time the page is open regardless of whether it's being interacted with or not? [1] Are they only including engaging directly on facebook.com or would looking at say, powered-by-facebook comments on a third party site add to this tally? If that's game, what other things are open to this interpretation? I'm not saying these metrics are fraudulent, just underspecified. --- 1. Under the more permissive metrics, I could be considered "on" stackoverflow, github, or wikipedia perhaps 4 hours a day - because I, like most, don't judiciously close every browser window immediately after I'm done. Although I certainly visit these sites a lot, tallying the numbers like this is probably disingenuous.
- tmuir 10y ago
  Tons of services have "log in with Facebook" features. Last I checked, Tinder required a Facebook account. I wonder if those logins are included?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Mendenhall 10y ago
All i think of when I see the word facebook is who would use that data mining, censoring, manipulative product. To each their own but I think many dont see whats going on with it.
- amelius 10y ago
  > many dont see whats going on with it I think we need some realistic examples of what could go wrong. To many, online privacy issues are a bit too hypothetical and abstract.
  - gvurrdon 10y ago
    Indeed; a common response I encounter if I complain about Facebook is along the lines of "I don't see why it matters that FB knows stuff about me, and I think I get more value from them than they possibly could get from me for the trivial information they learn about me."
  - Mendenhall 10y ago
    A prime example is on the front page of hacker news right now IMO. http://www.cnet.com/news/facebooks-newest-privacy-problem-faceprint-data/ http://www.cnet.com/news/facebooks-newest-privacy-problem-fa...
scoot 10y ago
"Facebook Has 50 Minutes of Your Time Each Day" FaceBook has none of my time ever. (Unless we're talking about their contributions to OSS.)
- ruffrey 10y ago
  Considering the widespread use of their open source projects like react, I'd say we have 50 minutes of THEIR time each day
  - spicyj 10y ago
    Certainly 50 minutes of mine! More than half of my days go to open-source React.
notliketherest 10y ago
Kill your Facebook. Seriously. You'll feel so liberated. And showing people pictures of your recent life when you meet them or email them is so fun and you get so much more attention and conversation out of it. Best decision of my life!
- riebschlager 10y ago
  Absolutely. I deactivated mine back in January and I most definitely do not miss it.
  - satori99 10y ago
    I have never had an account. The very idea of it was repugnant to me, even when it was launched. I think it mostly because of the must-use-real-name thing, which was the complete opposite of the way I used the Internet at the time. But also because I like being un-contactable by people I have known in the past. Unfortunately, my sister got a lot of "what happened to your brother?" messages, but they have mostly stopped now. Facebook still creeps me out.
- lazzlazzlazz 10y ago
  I deactivated my Facebook account for over three years, reactivating about 18 months ago. There is an initial feeling of liberation, but I ended up regretting it. I realize now that I should have just shaped my use to fit my needs: unfriend or unfollow people I don't care to follow, write more messages rather than scrolling through the newsfeed, and join events and groups more deliberately. Deactivating was just an easy way to avoid the headaches rather than going through the work of curating what I wanted to see. Now I actually use it to keep in touch with people I care about, rather than just pretend that's what I'm doing. I missed out on some things during my three years with Facebook off, and although I learned so much from having done it, I wouldn't do it again.
  - jupiter90000 10y ago
    Everyone has different experiences with this stuff. I deactivated for a while, then went back and 'curated' the hell out of it. After I did that, I realized the only interactions I was getting from it for a while could mostly be had via other websites, in-person, by phone and text, and deactivated a few months back again. Although yesterday, I logged in solely to download a picture my wife wanted I had of her then instantly deactivated again, if that counts. Since I weaned myself down majorly by curating the content severely for a while, almost no one had been griping to me about 'why aren't you on facebook?' when I stopped using it this last time. And I feel even less compelled to go back on. I enjoy having a sense of privacy, free time to do other things (I have that 50 minutes a day/whatever to do other stuff with now), and I think a better respect for the value of the precious time left in my life. I hope I never get drawn back in to using it.
zerotimer 10y ago
I don't think we should expect Facebook to change. We need better tools that allow people to stay away from it (and other such distractions in future). We need tools that help people understand how to manage their internet time better. They need to understand what kind of emotional costs (which will vary a lot) are associated with extended FB usage. And such tools will ideally be browser addons. Imagine a browser that I can configure based on my weekly goals. There are domains I want to avoid. There are domains where I most want to be (for that week). And some neutral domains like search engines. Maybe assign weights to these. Then over the week, browser reminds or guides us towards most productive behaviors. If our behavior is inconsistent with our initial goals, it assigns heavier penalties (like block domain for a week) for those negative domains. There are many interesting implications once someone starts thinking about some of these options. But at this point, I don't see exciting innovation on this.
- csydas 10y ago
  Though I do find your intent admirable, I think that it's misplaced - the reason there's no innovation on this front is because these sorts of time management tools are entirely dependent on the self-control of the persons they are targeted for, self-control issues being the reason they're glued to Facebook in the first place. While such a time management tool may benefit a small few, the majority of people at a computer just don't seem to care too much - heck, even today many users need to be compelled to install an adblocker and to keep their software up to date -- imagine trying to convince that user base to also restrict their ability to go places online voluntarily. Change has to come from within as an actual want - you have to want to be running every day to lose weight, you have to want to practice every day to learn an instrument or a language, and the type of change you're discussing has to come from an internal want to actually disassociate from Facebook and its ilk. Right now it's not so much that people don't want Facebook so much as they're not sure what else to do - the centralization of the web into a few major hub websites has left a lot of people completely lost as to what being online can actually do for you. You can see this effect all over the place - just watch how many people will upvote a "betterment" thread on reddit or imgur filled with free learning links, but never actually take the time to follow through on these threads. The few that do are the exception, not the rule. As great as it would be if we all learned a bit more self control, mindlessly browsing Facebook is the new "TV on in the background" and has been for awhile.
ihsw 10y ago
If they really want to dominate then it would be prudent for them to buy reddit and imgur.
Ileca 10y ago
I still don't see ANY value in using facebook besides giving to the market my personal data. I just don't understand why this is so popular. If I wanted to use a social network, I would use one where I can contact new people of interest, not the one I can talk with when I open my window but I won't because I use facebook.
- Unklejoe 10y ago
  The value for many people is: - Being able to easily communicate with a large group of your friends at the same time - Being able to contact old acquaintances who you otherwise wouldn't have been able to find - Being able to finely control they way you present yourself to your peers - Being able to easily coordinate events ...to name a few. There are other ways to accomplish the same tasks, but Facebook is coherent and easy to use. I personally don't use Facebook either, but I do see the value in it.
  - Ileca 10y ago
    Only your second point is valid to me and not worth the use of the system by itself. This is not worth the encapsulation around your acquaintances you are supposed to cultivate the relation face to face, not through a "wall" and mediocre public interactions. There is a lot of means to communicate and coordinate things efficiently (it was already possible before facebook) and the "fine control" over your "present yourself" is either an illusion or proof of your superficiality. I think it is the point around what facebook was built: the superficiality of people and their need to show off everywhere and think of themselves as some public figure. I guess that's also why instagram and selfies are so popular. It's all about network connection, not about the meaningful content the network is supposed to carry.
kinkdr 10y ago
I was never an active FB user, and it has been years since I deleted my account. On the other hand my wife is using it every now and then and I can see the entertainment value in it. I know everybody loves to hate it, but I don't see it as being inherently worse than TV, or Reddit...
- joelg 10y ago
  People who love to hate Facebook love to hate TV and Reddit equally.
are_hem 10y ago
the time spent looking through your FB feed to find something worth checking out largely contributes to it's dominance over time spent on twitter...
are_hem 10y ago
is it really user engagement or the time you spend scrolling through your feed to find something worth checking out, that dwarfs the time spent on twitter?
heifetz 10y ago
People spend 5 hours on average watching tv, so Facebook has a long way to go! Seriously, is this really something to be proud of?
davidwparker 10y ago
Last year, I was spending roughly ~25 minutes / day on Facebook (according to Rescuetime). I've never had the app, or messenger on my phone. So on Chrome, I added News Feed Eradicator (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicator-for/fjcldmjmjhkklehbacihaiopjklihlgg https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat...) and my usage dropped down to about 5 minutes / day (still more than necessary). Unlike a lot of people here (it seems), I get a lot of real usage out of Facebook though. For example, it's the number one source of events for my favorite hobby / workout. I wouldn't really be connected to the community and know what events are going on if I didn't have it.
- j_s 10y ago
  A slightly less drastic / more tweakable extension: http://www.fbpurity.com/ http://www.fbpurity.com/ I use it to delete game + app stories from the newsfeed; I will sheepishly admit I haven't disabled 'Deleted Friend Alerts' either.
dredmorbius 10y ago
Criticisms of FB notwithstanding (and it's interesting how that dominates this discussion), time-on-site is a horrible measure of "value added" to me. I've found highly-directed, highly-filtered, low-noise, low-distraction envrionments are what give me return. Interfaces and services like ... Books. A notebook. Index cards for noting thoughts and ideas. Tangibles which I can hold, flip through, sort, take outside, read in sunlight, and don't offer me the option of clicking over to see my feed or who's responded to me. (And no, I don't have a FB account either, never have.)
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
It seems like in general massively scaled technology companies don't get much love on HN. Seems odd to me as so much of what is discussed on HN is how to massively scale your own technology company. Is it that they become othered once they pass a certain size, or go public? What gives? I mean, I get it that people don't like the influence of VC and finance, but that's part of the game with scaled companies.

114 points by hvo 10y ago

necessity 10y ago

How is this news?

adrenalinelol 10y ago
Apparently Facebook is so good at user engagement, they can get people to spend time talking about how much time is spent on the platform ;)

arcticfox 10y ago

> As a company spokeswoman, Jessie Baker, told me: “The time people spend on our site is a good measure of whether we’re delivering value to them.” Eh, the same argument could be made by Philip Morris or a casino: "The time people spend using our products is a good measure of whether we're delivering value to them."

Aelinsaar 10y ago
Exactly. Usage patterns and "deriving value" seem like very different beasts.
- cryptoz 10y ago
  Yes; in fact, this statement would have made a lot more sense: > "The time people spend using our products is a good measure of whether they're delivering value to us."
  - Aelinsaar 10y ago
    Now that's a little ominous, but yeah absolutely. It also fits with the "consumer as product" viewpoint.
    - cryptoz 10y ago
      Isn't the only logical endpoint for Facebook to become a VR world where we all spend 100% of our time? That's what a forever-continuing revenue increase would create, right? And that's exactly how the incentive structures exist right now. I don't really like that society places such high emphasis on structures that create dystopias.
      - wallacoloo 10y ago
        Interestingly, I think there may be a point beyond which Facebook begins to lose revenue as users spend more time on their site. Think about it - their revenue comes from turn-over. They don't make money because you spend time on facebook - they make money because you spend time/money elsewhere, and they know enough about you to encourage you to spend more money on other people's products or otherwise sell their knowledge of you to people who can make those sales. At some point wherein Facebook occupies an exceptional amount of a user's time - when it becomes the only product a user wants - Facebook won't be able to sell you anything. At this point, the company would probably need to find other ways to profit besides advertising. But I don't think we'll ever get anywhere near the point at which an increase in FB use time corresponds to a decrease in advertiser value anyway.
        intrasight 10y ago
        you are neglecting in-app purchases
        newjersey 10y ago
        At some point, time spent on Facebook will start competing against time spent playing candy crush saga.
      - taneq 10y ago
        On the plus side, beyond a certain point Facebook is going to have to start investing heavily in life-extension technology for their users, so as to continue increasing the time that users can use Facebook.
- cb18 10y ago
  Well, value in sating a compulsive or addictive behavior, but not all values are equal.
  - arcticfox 10y ago
    Exactly, I agree. That's why I didn't disagree with the statement, just qualified it with more examples to illustrate your point.
  - rhizome 10y ago
    That so many exceptions and alternative interpretations are possible makes "value" a meaningless term. Perhaps some day reporters won't go MEGO[1] when hearing it. 1. https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/mego/ https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/mego/
    - cb18 10y ago
      Value is just like a variable, it is a place holder for what matters. And the value of the value can vary depending on the person or the situation. It could be a positive or a negative value, a value of high importance or minimal importance. Assigning something a value just basically means you're not entirely disinterested in it.
      - rhizome 10y ago
        Thanks. Well said.
- cwilkes 10y ago
  At a "big data" talk Yahoo gave one of the keynotes where they asked which one of the two email samples had the "most engagement" Surprise surprise it was the one with the confusing text on it -- people were clicking on it to see what the heck it meant. But to the Yahoo guys that meant that email was better as it got more clicks. And I suppose it is better if that's how your bonus is constructed.
  - coupdetaco 10y ago
    No really. Send slightly jacked-up canned emails. Gravitas!
AznHisoka 10y ago
Delivering value could just mean giving them dopamine in the short term. That's value.
tn13 10y ago
I think Philip Morris would not be wrong here. The problem here is the difference in values that individuals have. A lot of us might think of wasting time of Facebook or Casino is a bad idea but for many people it would not be the case. Facebook is essentially competing with Snapchat, Youtube, TV for time and if Facebook wins it means they are offering more value than others. People aren't going to read more books or get new skills if Facebook deliberately rations their user's time.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- natrius 10y ago
  Yes, there are lots of satisfying addictions competing for our time. That doesn't absolve any of them for the harm they cause. Anyone selling ads is trying to addict you to get you to see more ads. It's immoral.
  - tn13 10y ago
    I don't find it immoral.
panic 10y ago
This talk "Is Anything Worth Maximizing?" is worth a watch: http://nxhx.org/maximizing/ http://nxhx.org/maximizing/
- zerotimer 10y ago
  That link doesn't work. Can you verify? Edit: Its working now.
gumby 10y ago
You have an excellent nose for appropriate metaphors. That's awesome!
caylus 10y ago
Or the DMV. "The time people spend at our office is a good measure of whether we're delivering value to them."
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- twelvechairs 10y ago
  Or a hospital.
  - PunchTornado 10y ago
    or a cemetery
    - goldenkey 10y ago
      Way to get morbid HN... but yeah. Anything that distracts from original purpose is a tar pit for time. I certainly hope I don't go into a cemetery willing and end up staying...
      - DyslexicAtheist 10y ago
        love the way this escalated :)
bko 10y ago
Some people do enjoy smoking and/or gambling. Not everyone is a victim being exploited
- Sone7 10y ago
  Some people do enjoy heroin and/or being a slave. Not everyone is a victim being exploited. In other words, I really don't know what you're trying to add to the conversation.
  - bko 10y ago
    Just because you might find the experience mundane or meaningless and you may not be able to fathom why anyone would willfully use such a product doesn't mean that the users are being exploited. It's very condescending and offensive when you compare casual users of a social network that you may not like to real exploitation through chemical dependence or abuse.
- danhak 10y ago
  And some people are legitimately addicted and unable to stop despite their sincere desire. In many cases, companies engineer products and services to be as addictive as possible. The techniques used by casinos, for instance, are well known. This is not an argument for regulation, prohibition or anything like that. Merely a rebuttal to the falsehood that nobody is being "exploited" by such companies and that "value" is being created. In many cases value is being destroyed.
  - koolba 10y ago
    At the end of the day society has to decide, are we going to let people make there own decisions or are we going to decide for them? It might very from topic to topic (ex: tobacco vs. unhealthy foods), but it's one definitive answer per topic.
    - danhak 10y ago
      Right, but as I stated above that debate is out of scope. I'm just disputing the notion that fostering addiction amounts to "creating value."
nihonde 10y ago
I will never understand why advertising businesses (and that's what Facebook is) fail to see their fundamental value proposition: ROI on ad spend. Jessie Baker's comment fails in two respects: (1) eyeballs and engagement time is not a "good measure" without correlating to ROI for advertisers, and (2) FB's value proposition is not aimed at users, but rather at advertisers.
- brandnewlow 10y ago
  ROI-based measurement is the only sane way to measure the effectiveness of a marketing channel. But if ad companies are measured based on ROI, then they can be easily compared against other channels. That's the last thing any ad company wants. So to make a great deal of money as a marketing channel you need to invent a new metric, one that your company is very good at delivering on. Then you convince the market that metric is one they should care about. It's no different from how SaaS companies regularly invent new "spaces" that enterprises need solutions for (marketing automation, lead scoring, video marketing etc) or even how real estate agents in major metro areas regularly rename neighborhoods and redraw area boundaries. If you can make the market, define a new reality that your customers have to step into, you increase the odds that your customers will measure success in a way that favors your strengths.
  - nihonde 10y ago
    You're 100% right. I will never understand why ad spend is as high as it is when the customer never proves ROI. It made sense when ads were cultural background noise, in magazines and other media that had no way of providing feedback on conversions, etc. But we've crossed the rubicon, and yet ad channels still suck at ROI for the perverse reasons that you correctly mention. At least some channels, like App Stores for example, offer something like end-to-end metrics for placements.
rhizome 10y ago
"Value" is pretty much the most banal dimension possible. Total red flag euphemism.
kelukelugames 10y ago
I would be happier if I spent less time on facebook. It is a drug for me.

wfactor 10y ago

Sadly this estimate seems on point. I think the jump in time spent is largely because of Instagram though - there are many who check both daily

jheriko 10y ago

Why is this remotely bad? > “They’re doing a tremendous job of finding ways to keep people on the site” Could also be phrased "Facebook provides such great value to its unpaying customers that they are willing to spend 50 minutes per day interacting with their services" ... a spin/PR/sales person could word it better I'm sure

devishard 10y ago
Please don't feed the turd-polishers.

electic 10y ago

This should be a wake up call. This site really doesn't deliver anything of value. It doesn't really make you more social and it doesn't really connect you to people in the real world. So basically you spend 16,800 minutes a year on Facebook. That is 11 days of your life lost a year.

zappo2938 10y ago
I spend 50 minutes a day on Hacker News.
- n1l 10y ago
  let's not talk about reddit then
- intrasight 10y ago
  Hacker News is for me a news and discussion portal. Reddit is something that might show up from a Google search. I block most of the distracting internet during the day - except FB and HN - so of course those two get the majority of my allocated distracted time. I should measure it, but I'd not be at all surprised if they each got an hour a day.
Mendenhall 10y ago
Oh it surely delivers value for the creator:) many are very happy to get data mined and manipulated and dont see how it could be a problem at all.
lazzlazzlazz 10y ago
I get value from Facebook just like I get value from Hacker News, Reddit, Messenger, etc. It literally helps me connect to people in the real world - I just discovered Tycho's new album through there, planned a trip to a festival with friends there, just filled up my weekend, and discovered a new area I'm going to go rock climbing. If you are getting no value from Facebook, you're probably not using it correctly - which you can change.
- 10y ago

wslh 10y ago

I suggest you to read Momo by Michael Ende[1], it is basically about this topic. Obviously, not only Facebook is guilty. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_(novel)

nosuchthing 10y ago
Attention Deficit Disorder By Cefte The afternoon sun angled through a tear in the tent. Ma Bao-Zhi grunted, then shifted his face towards the shade and screwed up his eyes. In the absence of light, the retinal burns from his always-on pupil-tracking HUD-halo danced before his field of vision. He sat up and stretched. It was a new day. The corner of his visual field that was perpetually occupied by the DistroNet feed blinked. A major announcement was incoming from the most influential association of experts that he had ever been a part of: The Council Of Two Million With A Remit Of Everything. The upstart replacement of last year's not-hegemon, the Coven of Eight to the Seven; Masters of Knowledge, the Council had, yesterday, consisted of just over 50.3% of the surviving inhabitants of what had once been Taiwan SAR. However, as he scanned the headlines, he noted that an overnight disputation on the meaning of Buddha-nature had resulted in nearly two hundred being purged from the membership roster, and, more importantly, from the Council's ReDistroList. Ma had never posted to any discussion regarding Buddha-nature, for which he was now extremely thankful. Attention Distribution Cannot Be Gamed, he though, nodding to himself. It was a mantra every child knew, and it was obviously true. 'Gaming' would imply an illegitimate practice, and since the attention economy was inherently legitimate, any practice that arose thereof could not be 'gaming'. The use of randomly-assigned attention redistribution lists to strengthen the network-influence of an association of experts was one of the most powerful practices there was - without it, no modern association of experts could compete. With the saccadic grace of long practice, his pupils flipped to the updated, slightly smaller ReDistroList, and settled down to start his highly-encouraged ten hours of daily network-reinforcement. Ten hours - ten icons - each one painstakingly designed by the expert it represented. The Coven of Eight to the Seven had highly encouraged eight hours of ReDistroList attention, but the Council's superior attention ethic had led to an expert association network both wider and deeper in links, and thus, far more influential. The Coven defined their area of expertise too narrowly, and left themselves open to a ratio attack. It was a trivial task for the Council to dial down the attention ratio of key knowledge industries overnight, leaving the Coven rudderless and sinking. Ma had been a third-quartile defector, holding out longer than most; his punishment was to enter the Council with six month's half-ratio deficit. Half as likely to be randomly assigned to other experts ReDistroList, he counted himself lucky - the fourth quartile had been exiled entirely. As is, he was comfortably off in a deficit camp outside Taibao. Ma shook himself; introspection was an audience of one. The first icon belonged to Tracy Liu: 166kg, pink highlights and moderator by acclaim of a yaoi fandom for the ancient classic, Glengarry Glen Ross. The minutes ticked by, and as the completion bar for the first icon flipped over into green and Tracy's hand-drawn icon faded from sight - young Al Pacino gently cupping young Jack Lemmon's testicles on a bed of index cards - Ma decided that he would treat himself with an hour of free attention. He rucked the covers back from his legs and withdrew his 75MHz future-proofed laptop from its pouch. Minutes later, halfway through the boot-sequence, Ma heard the unmistakable whirring of a Bother-Gyro. He dug rapidly through the contents of the tent for the thick blanket he'd found the week before, to muffle the fans of the laptop, but the blanket had been redistributed. It was too late anyway: the Bother-Gyro's tracking software had heard the fans. "Go away!" shouted Ma. < Hello Friend And How Are You And Woo! > The Bother-Gyro hovered just out of Ma's reach. "滚蛋!" < Would You Like A Comestible?! Marmalade Is In This Week! > "Fuck off." Bother-Gyros were increasingly common, flying over the water from the Penghu Collective, and Ma had tangled with them before, when he was a high-ratio member of the Coven: an attractive target. The Collective were Min-speakers, and the language barrier was starving them of culture-based attention, and forcing them to desperate measures. He knew that while they would advertise to any moving object, their main purpose was to gain the attention of the victim. Even compared to the average camp member, Ma's influence ratio was low... "Hey! Bot! There's a high-ratio family just over that wall! You can bother them all at once! Think of the attention gains!" Unfortunately for Ma, the Bother-Gyro was also running off a 75MHz chip, which did not support voice recognition. Even more unfortunately, what little resources it did have to bring to bear were mainly concentrated on measuring the direction of gaze of the victim, and Ma's gaze had briefly moved from the Gyro to the wall he was gesturing at. The Gyro aimed a module at the RFID tag on Ma's halo. pffffsss "Fuck!" Pepper-spray will catch anyone's attention. Whilst Ma rolled around in the dirt, the Bother-Gyro gently settled on the ground next to him, conserving battery. Proximity was worth less attention than direct eye-contact, but it was still worth something. After a minute, the database updated the Gyro on Ma's uninspiring attention value, and it buzzed off in search of less deficient prey. ---- continued at ( http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3462638&userid=0&perpage=40&highlight=&pagenumber=28#post400702769 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=346... )

ojbyrne 10y ago

I wonder how much of an overlap there is with "waiting in line." because that's a big use case for me.

pmalynin 10y ago

Yeah not gonna happen. Literally the only thing I use it for is chat.

x0054 10y ago

While people are spending more and more time on FB, I find it that there is less and less original content uploaded. It's all likes and re-shares.

vvpan 10y ago
It's reverberation chamber.
nosuchthing 10y ago
It's a 'go to' reflex, like TV.
jsm386 10y ago
Facebook is actively trying to deal with that truth: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-07/facebook-said-to-face-decline-in-people-posting-personal-content http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-07/facebook-s...

brianstorms 10y ago

Facebook gets about 10 minutes of my time each day, thanks to heavily muting many friends' posts, FB Purity, and uBlock. Meanwhile, Tesla has 120 minutes of my time each day. I'm fine with that.

Mendenhall 10y ago
I am not someone who uses facebook, if you would not mind could you explain briefly what you mean by "muting friends posts"?
- koala_advert 10y ago
  You can "unfollow" people that you have added, so that their posts no longer show up on your news feed. You still have them added as a friend, you just don't see their posts without visiting their profile page.

xirdstl 10y ago

That includes Messenger. Is Messenger just IM? If so, that estimate makes more sense. Do they serve ads there too?

kristopolous 10y ago

Knowing it's within Facebook's financial interest to self-report this unverifiable number as high as they can, I wonder what's included. Are they only including when a user has the mobile app or browser window open and is engaging with the content or are they measuring the total time the page is open regardless of whether it's being interacted with or not? [1] Are they only including engaging directly on facebook.com or would looking at say, powered-by-facebook comments on a third party site add to this tally? If that's game, what other things are open to this interpretation? I'm not saying these metrics are fraudulent, just underspecified. --- 1. Under the more permissive metrics, I could be considered "on" stackoverflow, github, or wikipedia perhaps 4 hours a day - because I, like most, don't judiciously close every browser window immediately after I'm done. Although I certainly visit these sites a lot, tallying the numbers like this is probably disingenuous.

tmuir 10y ago
Tons of services have "log in with Facebook" features. Last I checked, Tinder required a Facebook account. I wonder if those logins are included?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Mendenhall 10y ago

All i think of when I see the word facebook is who would use that data mining, censoring, manipulative product. To each their own but I think many dont see whats going on with it.

amelius 10y ago
> many dont see whats going on with it I think we need some realistic examples of what could go wrong. To many, online privacy issues are a bit too hypothetical and abstract.
- gvurrdon 10y ago
  Indeed; a common response I encounter if I complain about Facebook is along the lines of "I don't see why it matters that FB knows stuff about me, and I think I get more value from them than they possibly could get from me for the trivial information they learn about me."
- Mendenhall 10y ago
  A prime example is on the front page of hacker news right now IMO. http://www.cnet.com/news/facebooks-newest-privacy-problem-faceprint-data/ http://www.cnet.com/news/facebooks-newest-privacy-problem-fa...

scoot 10y ago

"Facebook Has 50 Minutes of Your Time Each Day" FaceBook has none of my time ever. (Unless we're talking about their contributions to OSS.)

ruffrey 10y ago
Considering the widespread use of their open source projects like react, I'd say we have 50 minutes of THEIR time each day
- spicyj 10y ago
  Certainly 50 minutes of mine! More than half of my days go to open-source React.

notliketherest 10y ago

Kill your Facebook. Seriously. You'll feel so liberated. And showing people pictures of your recent life when you meet them or email them is so fun and you get so much more attention and conversation out of it. Best decision of my life!

riebschlager 10y ago
Absolutely. I deactivated mine back in January and I most definitely do not miss it.
- satori99 10y ago
  I have never had an account. The very idea of it was repugnant to me, even when it was launched. I think it mostly because of the must-use-real-name thing, which was the complete opposite of the way I used the Internet at the time. But also because I like being un-contactable by people I have known in the past. Unfortunately, my sister got a lot of "what happened to your brother?" messages, but they have mostly stopped now. Facebook still creeps me out.
lazzlazzlazz 10y ago
I deactivated my Facebook account for over three years, reactivating about 18 months ago. There is an initial feeling of liberation, but I ended up regretting it. I realize now that I should have just shaped my use to fit my needs: unfriend or unfollow people I don't care to follow, write more messages rather than scrolling through the newsfeed, and join events and groups more deliberately. Deactivating was just an easy way to avoid the headaches rather than going through the work of curating what I wanted to see. Now I actually use it to keep in touch with people I care about, rather than just pretend that's what I'm doing. I missed out on some things during my three years with Facebook off, and although I learned so much from having done it, I wouldn't do it again.
- jupiter90000 10y ago
  Everyone has different experiences with this stuff. I deactivated for a while, then went back and 'curated' the hell out of it. After I did that, I realized the only interactions I was getting from it for a while could mostly be had via other websites, in-person, by phone and text, and deactivated a few months back again. Although yesterday, I logged in solely to download a picture my wife wanted I had of her then instantly deactivated again, if that counts. Since I weaned myself down majorly by curating the content severely for a while, almost no one had been griping to me about 'why aren't you on facebook?' when I stopped using it this last time. And I feel even less compelled to go back on. I enjoy having a sense of privacy, free time to do other things (I have that 50 minutes a day/whatever to do other stuff with now), and I think a better respect for the value of the precious time left in my life. I hope I never get drawn back in to using it.

zerotimer 10y ago

I don't think we should expect Facebook to change. We need better tools that allow people to stay away from it (and other such distractions in future). We need tools that help people understand how to manage their internet time better. They need to understand what kind of emotional costs (which will vary a lot) are associated with extended FB usage. And such tools will ideally be browser addons. Imagine a browser that I can configure based on my weekly goals. There are domains I want to avoid. There are domains where I most want to be (for that week). And some neutral domains like search engines. Maybe assign weights to these. Then over the week, browser reminds or guides us towards most productive behaviors. If our behavior is inconsistent with our initial goals, it assigns heavier penalties (like block domain for a week) for those negative domains. There are many interesting implications once someone starts thinking about some of these options. But at this point, I don't see exciting innovation on this.

csydas 10y ago
Though I do find your intent admirable, I think that it's misplaced - the reason there's no innovation on this front is because these sorts of time management tools are entirely dependent on the self-control of the persons they are targeted for, self-control issues being the reason they're glued to Facebook in the first place. While such a time management tool may benefit a small few, the majority of people at a computer just don't seem to care too much - heck, even today many users need to be compelled to install an adblocker and to keep their software up to date -- imagine trying to convince that user base to also restrict their ability to go places online voluntarily. Change has to come from within as an actual want - you have to want to be running every day to lose weight, you have to want to practice every day to learn an instrument or a language, and the type of change you're discussing has to come from an internal want to actually disassociate from Facebook and its ilk. Right now it's not so much that people don't want Facebook so much as they're not sure what else to do - the centralization of the web into a few major hub websites has left a lot of people completely lost as to what being online can actually do for you. You can see this effect all over the place - just watch how many people will upvote a "betterment" thread on reddit or imgur filled with free learning links, but never actually take the time to follow through on these threads. The few that do are the exception, not the rule. As great as it would be if we all learned a bit more self control, mindlessly browsing Facebook is the new "TV on in the background" and has been for awhile.

ihsw 10y ago

If they really want to dominate then it would be prudent for them to buy reddit and imgur.

Ileca 10y ago

I still don't see ANY value in using facebook besides giving to the market my personal data. I just don't understand why this is so popular. If I wanted to use a social network, I would use one where I can contact new people of interest, not the one I can talk with when I open my window but I won't because I use facebook.

Unklejoe 10y ago
The value for many people is: - Being able to easily communicate with a large group of your friends at the same time - Being able to contact old acquaintances who you otherwise wouldn't have been able to find - Being able to finely control they way you present yourself to your peers - Being able to easily coordinate events ...to name a few. There are other ways to accomplish the same tasks, but Facebook is coherent and easy to use. I personally don't use Facebook either, but I do see the value in it.
- Ileca 10y ago
  Only your second point is valid to me and not worth the use of the system by itself. This is not worth the encapsulation around your acquaintances you are supposed to cultivate the relation face to face, not through a "wall" and mediocre public interactions. There is a lot of means to communicate and coordinate things efficiently (it was already possible before facebook) and the "fine control" over your "present yourself" is either an illusion or proof of your superficiality. I think it is the point around what facebook was built: the superficiality of people and their need to show off everywhere and think of themselves as some public figure. I guess that's also why instagram and selfies are so popular. It's all about network connection, not about the meaningful content the network is supposed to carry.

kinkdr 10y ago

I was never an active FB user, and it has been years since I deleted my account. On the other hand my wife is using it every now and then and I can see the entertainment value in it. I know everybody loves to hate it, but I don't see it as being inherently worse than TV, or Reddit...

joelg 10y ago
People who love to hate Facebook love to hate TV and Reddit equally.

are_hem 10y ago

the time spent looking through your FB feed to find something worth checking out largely contributes to it's dominance over time spent on twitter...

are_hem 10y ago

is it really user engagement or the time you spend scrolling through your feed to find something worth checking out, that dwarfs the time spent on twitter?

heifetz 10y ago

People spend 5 hours on average watching tv, so Facebook has a long way to go! Seriously, is this really something to be proud of?

davidwparker 10y ago

Last year, I was spending roughly ~25 minutes / day on Facebook (according to Rescuetime). I've never had the app, or messenger on my phone. So on Chrome, I added News Feed Eradicator (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicator-for/fjcldmjmjhkklehbacihaiopjklihlgg https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat...) and my usage dropped down to about 5 minutes / day (still more than necessary). Unlike a lot of people here (it seems), I get a lot of real usage out of Facebook though. For example, it's the number one source of events for my favorite hobby / workout. I wouldn't really be connected to the community and know what events are going on if I didn't have it.

j_s 10y ago
A slightly less drastic / more tweakable extension: http://www.fbpurity.com/ http://www.fbpurity.com/ I use it to delete game + app stories from the newsfeed; I will sheepishly admit I haven't disabled 'Deleted Friend Alerts' either.

dredmorbius 10y ago

Criticisms of FB notwithstanding (and it's interesting how that dominates this discussion), time-on-site is a horrible measure of "value added" to me. I've found highly-directed, highly-filtered, low-noise, low-distraction envrionments are what give me return. Interfaces and services like ... Books. A notebook. Index cards for noting thoughts and ideas. Tangibles which I can hold, flip through, sort, take outside, read in sunlight, and don't offer me the option of clicking over to see my feed or who's responded to me. (And no, I don't have a FB account either, never have.)

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

It seems like in general massively scaled technology companies don't get much love on HN. Seems odd to me as so much of what is discussed on HN is how to massively scale your own technology company. Is it that they become othered once they pass a certain size, or go public? What gives? I mean, I get it that people don't like the influence of VC and finance, but that's part of the game with scaled companies.