6 ms·

‘Facebook is everything to us’: How Little Things grew to 50M users in 3 years

83 points by Oatseller 10y ago

tempodox 10y ago
I wonder how long it will take until young people view FB membership as the epitome of stuffiness and boredom -- one of those things “our parents found cool when they were young and didn't know any better”.
- chlee 10y ago
  It's already happening. Recently, I've asked my high school aged sister and colleged aged brother about how many of their friends and peers use FB nowadays. Brother -- He and his friends uses it sometimes. But most of their social activities are shared on Instagram or Snapchat and occasionally twitter. Sister -- Barely at all. FB is seen as uncool and old school by her and her friends. She and most of her friends share their social activities on instagram and snapchat. Ironically, my mom (in her 50's) uses FB fairly regularly, both for sharing updates and checking up on her friends/acquaintance.
  - patja 10y ago
    My daughter is a high school senior. She says her class is the last one that still uses Facebook at all, and even that is mostly to interact with family not friends. On the other hand, they are all active on Instagram so it isn't like they have gone far.
    - weisser 10y ago
      So all 4 people mentioned (your daughter and the 3 in the parent) all use Facebook by way of Instagram. This is why acquisitions happen and why buying Instagram when FB did may go down as one of the best buys. Missing Snapchat may be one of the biggest misses.
      - smelendez 10y ago
        My guess is that Snapchat will fade, like MySpace, LiveJournal or AIM. It's great for teens and early adults, with tight knit social circles and the undivided attention to look at fast-disappearing posts, but that's not much of the population. Lots of people don't even understand how it works, while Facebook and Instagram are pretty intuitive. My bet is the current audience will age out of Snapchat, gradually seeing it as something for kids, and the next group of kids will use something else entirely. Of course, I could be wrong--I wouldn't have predicted Snapchat would get as big as it has, so more power to them if they can keep it going.
        mastazi 10y ago
        Yeah when I read this article that was recently posted on HN [1] I though: what will be Snapchat's retention rate once these teens become adults? It seems to me that Instagram is better positioned in that respect. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11075336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11075336
        billmalarky 10y ago
        I've stopped naysaying snapchat the third time they made me feel stupid. The first time was when I first heard of it, "that'll never take off what a dumb fad app." The second time was when they turned down the $40MM offer from facebook. The third time was when they turned down the $3B offer from facebook. They're now valued at $16B. I don't bash snapchat anymore. Turns out snapchat isn't just for messaging anymore, a lot of people watch the channels on it as if it was any other form of TV, and advertisers absolutely love it. I'm sure it will be disrupted at some point, but I've stopped trying to "call it."
        toyg 10y ago
        Progressive stratification does not imply companies will disappear. We might well end in a situation where people "graduate" from one social network to the next as they get older. So preteens will start on Snapchat, move to Instagram when going to high school, then Twitter and/or dating networks in college, LinkedIn as they hit the job market, and eventually Facebook when settling down. Most of our cultural output (books, films etc) works like that already.
  - Akujin 10y ago
    Clubbing is still huge on FB. There's a lot of promotion on IG that links straight to a FB events page.
  - garhirunrat 10y ago
    I agree, my brother don't use FB anymore, he deleted his account. While my mom on facebook daily. For me I don't need update from friends, I have friends. If I want to I will text them and ask what's up. I think facebook posts is something it want people to see. We don't know wheater it real and true. The only social network I'm on is Medium.com. Twitter I only use it to ask companies and people I don't have their number e.g. opensource developers. Instagram sometimes, youtube and 8tracks everyday.
  - patrickaljord 10y ago
    High schoolers also gave up on email a long time ago. Doesn't mean they won't be using email once they grow older.
- puranjay 10y ago
  I'm 27 and Facebook is now only a "passive" social network. I haven't shared anything in years. BUT I still check it out every couple of days. Sometimes out of habit, sometimes because I want to see what others in my family are up to. It's not much about friends any longer. It's just the default "living room" for my extended family
  - lazzlazzlazz 10y ago
    You can change that and get some concrete value out of Facebook. Like with everything else, getting value from it requires an investment in curating who and what you want to see. Post something and give everyone else the tiny joy you get when you see someone else's update.
    - newjersey 10y ago
      Or go the other way and unfollow everyone like I did. An empty news feed is the best news feed. I don't get why they insist on curating what I see. I wouldn't have done what I did if they just left the news feed at reverse chronological order with most recent on top.
arjie 10y ago
The website itself looks like the magazines you see at the supermarket when you're in line at the checkout counter. They're very attention catching but in a different way from "What happened next will surprise you" things: "15-Minute Meditation Practice To Guarantee A Great Day", "Your Favorite Bathing Suit Style Reveals Everything About Your Personality", "100-Year-Old Sears House Gets A Modern Makeover". I can see why they're successful, but have to say I was surprised by the $50 million revenue. Fascinating.
- increment_i 10y ago
  Not to mention the subtle social engineering I caught on my visit - a little mail icon on the navbar, made to look like I have (1) new message.
  - shortformblog 10y ago
    That's Digiday (which published the article), not Little Things, just an FYI.
  - xufi 10y ago
    That reminds me of that study that was done a while ago that showed how much information you can guess about people based om their FB posts http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinkers-with-users-emotions-in-news-feed-experiment-stirring-outcry.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinker...
  - puranjay 10y ago
    Well, these little things matter when you want people to come back to your site :)
  - morgante 10y ago
    Wow, that's pretty abhorrent of Digiday. It's a true dark pattern. You have no mail there. Certainly not one message. They're blatantly lying to users in an attempt to get emails.
  - chinathrow 10y ago
1121redblackgo 10y ago
Facebook is the backbone social network. While other platforms will come and go, unless they screw it up, Facebook will, for a long time, be the Alamo of social networks; the fallback, the final rallying point, the basis from which the branches of knowing 'who's who' extend. As long as they understand this and don't jeopardize the position Facebook should be around in this minimum capacity for a long time to come. In the short term I think they are doing the best they can do to position themselves for newer and longer technologies. I wish them all the best and hope to see some real, concrete innovation from them in the next few years.
- jrbapna 10y ago
  I'm curious as to why you think this is the case. For one, users are fickle and attention greatly shifts every time some new social network comes out from complete left field. Facebook got Instagram, but they lost big on Snapchat. Additionally, Facebook isn't doing so well in emerging markets, which have by far more volume in terms of number of users and purchasing power.
  - 1121redblackgo 10y ago
    The event that was Facebook in it's hot phase; that massive net that captured everyone, EVERYONE, young, young-old, old; that excitement and newness is damn near impossible to replicate in this day and age at FB scale. It could be done, but at what cost, at what point in time, and from how do people buy in. Facebook spanned generations, spanned social classes, spanned continents, and mingled everyone in the process. People have deviated from that main network in the subsequent years, but every now and then, those that 'left' for other pastures always come back to facebook to see 'whatsup' see 'how's the old crowd doing' and see 'how is so and so doing'. No one else can do that, no one else has that power. The social tree always recurses back to facebook. What that means for markets, new prospects etc, i don't know. But behaviorally speaking facebook is far, far from out of the public mind, and as the years grow longer, while it may exist at a lower level in our day-to-day lives than some hip platforms, it persists as strong as ever.
    - 10y ago
hasan459 10y ago
it possible with right marketing and user friendly interface.
ari_ 10y ago
Article fails to mention that the founders started Azoogle, which became Epic - one of the biggest companies in the CPA ad space back in the day. In other words, they know what they're doing.
jgalt212 10y ago
I am almost never see news articles in my Facebook feed. I mostly see ads and pictures of my aunt's breakfast and rants about how Wen shampoo doesn't work as advertised. Am I doing something wrong?
- ape4 10y ago
  Me too. If they have to pay (sponsored content) to get things in front of eyeballs... that can't be profitable.

83 points by Oatseller 10y ago

I wonder how long it will take until young people view FB membership as the epitome of stuffiness and boredom -- one of those things “our parents found cool when they were young and didn't know any better”.

chlee 10y ago
It's already happening. Recently, I've asked my high school aged sister and colleged aged brother about how many of their friends and peers use FB nowadays. Brother -- He and his friends uses it sometimes. But most of their social activities are shared on Instagram or Snapchat and occasionally twitter. Sister -- Barely at all. FB is seen as uncool and old school by her and her friends. She and most of her friends share their social activities on instagram and snapchat. Ironically, my mom (in her 50's) uses FB fairly regularly, both for sharing updates and checking up on her friends/acquaintance.
- patja 10y ago
  My daughter is a high school senior. She says her class is the last one that still uses Facebook at all, and even that is mostly to interact with family not friends. On the other hand, they are all active on Instagram so it isn't like they have gone far.
  - weisser 10y ago
    So all 4 people mentioned (your daughter and the 3 in the parent) all use Facebook by way of Instagram. This is why acquisitions happen and why buying Instagram when FB did may go down as one of the best buys. Missing Snapchat may be one of the biggest misses.
    - smelendez 10y ago
      My guess is that Snapchat will fade, like MySpace, LiveJournal or AIM. It's great for teens and early adults, with tight knit social circles and the undivided attention to look at fast-disappearing posts, but that's not much of the population. Lots of people don't even understand how it works, while Facebook and Instagram are pretty intuitive. My bet is the current audience will age out of Snapchat, gradually seeing it as something for kids, and the next group of kids will use something else entirely. Of course, I could be wrong--I wouldn't have predicted Snapchat would get as big as it has, so more power to them if they can keep it going.
      - mastazi 10y ago
        Yeah when I read this article that was recently posted on HN [1] I though: what will be Snapchat's retention rate once these teens become adults? It seems to me that Instagram is better positioned in that respect. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11075336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11075336
      - billmalarky 10y ago
        I've stopped naysaying snapchat the third time they made me feel stupid. The first time was when I first heard of it, "that'll never take off what a dumb fad app." The second time was when they turned down the $40MM offer from facebook. The third time was when they turned down the $3B offer from facebook. They're now valued at $16B. I don't bash snapchat anymore. Turns out snapchat isn't just for messaging anymore, a lot of people watch the channels on it as if it was any other form of TV, and advertisers absolutely love it. I'm sure it will be disrupted at some point, but I've stopped trying to "call it."
      - toyg 10y ago
        Progressive stratification does not imply companies will disappear. We might well end in a situation where people "graduate" from one social network to the next as they get older. So preteens will start on Snapchat, move to Instagram when going to high school, then Twitter and/or dating networks in college, LinkedIn as they hit the job market, and eventually Facebook when settling down. Most of our cultural output (books, films etc) works like that already.
- Akujin 10y ago
  Clubbing is still huge on FB. There's a lot of promotion on IG that links straight to a FB events page.
- garhirunrat 10y ago
  I agree, my brother don't use FB anymore, he deleted his account. While my mom on facebook daily. For me I don't need update from friends, I have friends. If I want to I will text them and ask what's up. I think facebook posts is something it want people to see. We don't know wheater it real and true. The only social network I'm on is Medium.com. Twitter I only use it to ask companies and people I don't have their number e.g. opensource developers. Instagram sometimes, youtube and 8tracks everyday.
- patrickaljord 10y ago
  High schoolers also gave up on email a long time ago. Doesn't mean they won't be using email once they grow older.
puranjay 10y ago
I'm 27 and Facebook is now only a "passive" social network. I haven't shared anything in years. BUT I still check it out every couple of days. Sometimes out of habit, sometimes because I want to see what others in my family are up to. It's not much about friends any longer. It's just the default "living room" for my extended family
- lazzlazzlazz 10y ago
  You can change that and get some concrete value out of Facebook. Like with everything else, getting value from it requires an investment in curating who and what you want to see. Post something and give everyone else the tiny joy you get when you see someone else's update.
  - newjersey 10y ago
    Or go the other way and unfollow everyone like I did. An empty news feed is the best news feed. I don't get why they insist on curating what I see. I wouldn't have done what I did if they just left the news feed at reverse chronological order with most recent on top.

arjie 10y ago

The website itself looks like the magazines you see at the supermarket when you're in line at the checkout counter. They're very attention catching but in a different way from "What happened next will surprise you" things: "15-Minute Meditation Practice To Guarantee A Great Day", "Your Favorite Bathing Suit Style Reveals Everything About Your Personality", "100-Year-Old Sears House Gets A Modern Makeover". I can see why they're successful, but have to say I was surprised by the $50 million revenue. Fascinating.

increment_i 10y ago
Not to mention the subtle social engineering I caught on my visit - a little mail icon on the navbar, made to look like I have (1) new message.
- shortformblog 10y ago
  That's Digiday (which published the article), not Little Things, just an FYI.
- xufi 10y ago
  That reminds me of that study that was done a while ago that showed how much information you can guess about people based om their FB posts http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinkers-with-users-emotions-in-news-feed-experiment-stirring-outcry.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinker...
- puranjay 10y ago
  Well, these little things matter when you want people to come back to your site :)
- morgante 10y ago
  Wow, that's pretty abhorrent of Digiday. It's a true dark pattern. You have no mail there. Certainly not one message. They're blatantly lying to users in an attempt to get emails.
- chinathrow 10y ago

1121redblackgo 10y ago

Facebook is the backbone social network. While other platforms will come and go, unless they screw it up, Facebook will, for a long time, be the Alamo of social networks; the fallback, the final rallying point, the basis from which the branches of knowing 'who's who' extend. As long as they understand this and don't jeopardize the position Facebook should be around in this minimum capacity for a long time to come. In the short term I think they are doing the best they can do to position themselves for newer and longer technologies. I wish them all the best and hope to see some real, concrete innovation from them in the next few years.

jrbapna 10y ago
I'm curious as to why you think this is the case. For one, users are fickle and attention greatly shifts every time some new social network comes out from complete left field. Facebook got Instagram, but they lost big on Snapchat. Additionally, Facebook isn't doing so well in emerging markets, which have by far more volume in terms of number of users and purchasing power.
- 1121redblackgo 10y ago
  The event that was Facebook in it's hot phase; that massive net that captured everyone, EVERYONE, young, young-old, old; that excitement and newness is damn near impossible to replicate in this day and age at FB scale. It could be done, but at what cost, at what point in time, and from how do people buy in. Facebook spanned generations, spanned social classes, spanned continents, and mingled everyone in the process. People have deviated from that main network in the subsequent years, but every now and then, those that 'left' for other pastures always come back to facebook to see 'whatsup' see 'how's the old crowd doing' and see 'how is so and so doing'. No one else can do that, no one else has that power. The social tree always recurses back to facebook. What that means for markets, new prospects etc, i don't know. But behaviorally speaking facebook is far, far from out of the public mind, and as the years grow longer, while it may exist at a lower level in our day-to-day lives than some hip platforms, it persists as strong as ever.
  - 10y ago

hasan459 10y ago

it possible with right marketing and user friendly interface.

ari_ 10y ago

Article fails to mention that the founders started Azoogle, which became Epic - one of the biggest companies in the CPA ad space back in the day. In other words, they know what they're doing.

jgalt212 10y ago

I am almost never see news articles in my Facebook feed. I mostly see ads and pictures of my aunt's breakfast and rants about how Wen shampoo doesn't work as advertised. Am I doing something wrong?

ape4 10y ago
Me too. If they have to pay (sponsored content) to get things in front of eyeballs... that can't be profitable.