10 ms·

Facebook Has Got an Instagram Problem

102 points by imartin2k 9y ago

strebler 9y ago
I didn't quite understand, what is the problem with Instagram? It's too popular? Or just that it's not dropping in popularity vs Facebook (due to their recent adjustments)? I wouldn't consider Instagram to be a messaging app - in fact they're spinning off another app from Instagram just to do messaging (because it's not exactly great at that). It sounds to me more like Facebook might have some problem and Instagram is just doing it's own thing (as are Facebook's other services).
- vanilla_nut 9y ago
  Somehow I completely missed the news about the standalone Instagram messaging app (called Direct, for anybody interested). Looks like I should jump ship just like I did with Facebook before it's too late.
bognition 9y ago
Honestly with all the changes to Instagram I find myself using the app less and less. The changes I'm thinking about are ads in the feed and random content to drive engagement. Both of these things are driving me to use the app less. I'm realizing that Facebook does two things builds a social network and then strip mines it off all value.
- aaronblohowiak 9y ago
  i hate having to scroll past content i have seen in order to see content that i havent, and the out-of-order shenanigans.
- wanderr 9y ago
  Non linear feed makes it crappy for me. Now I'm guaranteed to miss stuff from people I care about, just like on FB.
  - wwweston 9y ago
    This. Why, why, why? I mean, I'm sure there's an ostensible reason. Maybe there's metrics that show it increases engagement (which I'd believe, since it kindof fits with the studies that say an uncertain reward is more addictive than completely predictable reward). Maybe adding a special sauce ML algorithm to the feed generation process lets a product manager add a bullet point to their resume and yearly review. But I kindof think the reason has to be something that is not going to be particularly user driven or otherwise reflect well on FB, because as far as I can tell most users who are conscious about it reaaaally would like to be able to at least set a setting that would give them a strict chronological feed. And yet, that's never an option, and FB never even seems to talk about reasons why they know their way is totally awesome.
    - justAnotherNET 9y ago
      If it was better for users they’d toot their own horn about it. It’s more likely Ad revenue is x% higher so they do it that way.
    - vanderZwan 9y ago
      > Maybe there's metrics that show it increases engagement (which I'd believe, since it kindof fits with the studies that say an uncertain reward is more addictive than completely predictable reward) I wonder how much of those metrics are false positives due to people scrolling more in frustration to find the user updates that they are missing
      - lou1306 9y ago
        You might be on to something. "Hey, did you see what $mutual_friend has posted on Facebook this morning?" Cue 15 minutes of scrolling past two-weeks-old posts
        vanderZwan 9y ago
        Realises they could have searched for that friend and opened their profile Cue 15 more minutes of scrolling before realising they're two months back because they missed the actual post, because Facebook does not show every update by default
- zwily 9y ago
  For some reason I have never seen an ad in Instagram. (And yes, I do use it...)
  - eat_veggies 9y ago
    I see ads on Instagram all the time. Just scrolling through two days of my feed (but it's hard to tell, because it's not chronological anymore), I see some ads from therealcost, xbox, lovepop cards, kelloggs frosted flakes, m&m's chocolate, some music festival, instagram itself, and six posts from accounts I don't follow, as part of its new 'Recommended for You' (aka garbage I don't care to see) sections. Perhaps I fit their demographics, so I get more of them.
  - graeme 9y ago
    I used to see them, but recently they have all vanished. No idea why. Maybe I was too low engagement. The addition of stories does make it feel busier though. I'm enjoying my time on it much less than I used to. Even after muting stories from people whose stories I wasn't interested in watching.
  - tonypace 9y ago
    I'm a teacher in Asia. My students complain mightily about the sudden deluge of ads. They experience it as being much worse than Facebook.
  - Renaud 9y ago
    That's strange, I get a sponsored content like every 5 to 6 pictures. It's annoying to the point that it's about to be the last straw for me. While there are talented photographers on Instagram, the app is really poor as a way to appreciate photography (can't zoom, no iPad app to better view content) and it's also poor as a community, favouring instead over-consumption and poor engagement (low quality comments, if any). Then there are the shenanigans that game user engagement, like delaying likes to force people to check the app more often or nagging me to enable notifications every single time I open the app. It has become little more than an ad-delivery platform.
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  Yeah, the magic feels gone. They just announced they're (after years of holding the line) opening up the API for publishing photos, so it'll be a spammy feed of corporate stuff very soon.
- vanilla_nut 9y ago
  I feel very similarly. It reminds me of facebook's transition to the News Feed -- even without ads, the introduction of a content algorithm ruined my main use case for the platform: following just my very central friend group and seeing everything they post. On the plus side, Facebook has now taught me (twice!) that they (or any other "social media" company) can't be trusted. Now I'm just deciding whether I should give up social media altogether. I already deleted my Facebook since it became completely useless over the past few years (friends don't post, I don't see their posts when they do, notifications are useless and diluted), I'm considering deleting my instagram (far, far, far too many ads; friends don't post as much)... is it worth it to try to build out a presence on Mastodon? Or is that doomed, too?
- taylorexpander 9y ago
  For some reason, the ads I’m seeing on Instagram are creepily relevant for me. I just checked and literally it just shows me advertisements for furniture (I like design…) and plants (I like plants…). I’ve actually bought a plant related thing from one of them, and the ads that show up actually do make me stop and look at them. On the other hand, it’s also showing me advertisements for watches. I have no idea why, because I hate wearing watches and I’ve definitely never googled for watches before.
  - castle-bravo 9y ago
    Maybe it knows you're always late for meetings and appointments and is giving you a subtle hint that you need to up your game and get a watch. ;) That, or their model has found a correlation between liking chairs, plants, and watches but doesn't account for your unusual distaste for watches. Take heart, facebook doesn't know you well enough to convince you to hand over your wallet to their customers (yet).
jlmorton 9y ago
> Messaging apps are the third phase of platforms on which digital audiences congregate. First came websites, then social networks and now messaging apps—which collectively accounted for 7.7 billion monthly active users (MAUs) at the end of 2017, up from 6.6 billion in 2016 and 5.5 billion in 2015. This is a massive segment that continues to grow at pace. That's a pretty misleading claim. I guess I sort of understand what's being expressed here, but it feels weird to just add up every platform's monthly active users and come up with a number larger than the population of the Earth.
- vanderZwan 9y ago
  Also, chat programs are older than social networks. You could even say it's the only application with direct lineage to using a phone as a phone (and let's not forget about texting). So how can they be the third phase after regular websites and then social networks?
  - autokad 9y ago
    yeah, the best parts of the internet in the late 90s was chats and messenger apps. remember excite chat? i loved that, but mostly used irc. messenger wise, started using icq but people (me included) hated remembering a huge number to log in. AIM was great though, and msn messenger was great because it tied right into your email too.
    - pault 9y ago
      My brother and I spent hours every evening on a chat service called the Palace. I don't know what happened to it but it was probably responsible for at least a full point off my grade average. :)
  - hkmurakami 9y ago
    Somewhere ICQ is rolling in its grave.
    - paulie_a 9y ago
niftich 9y ago
The title doesn't match the article's content: the content primarily notes that Facebook's own messaging apps Messenger, WhatsApp, and seemingly, in the article's interpretation, Instagram-as-a-messaging app are siphoning screen-time away from Facebook itself, but Instagram is the least likely to present an a true threat. After all, Instagram lends itself well to high-margin brand advertising, interest-based advertising, and hyperlocal content. It's hardly a problem that certain demographics spend less time on Facebook and go on Instagram instead, especially if these demographics are quite valuable on their own. Even the article admits that the more traditional messaging networks like Messenger and WhatsApp are harder to monetize. They have had some experiments the past [1] but with so many competitors, user resistance is a risk. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13489098#13489554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13489098#13489554
mromanuk 9y ago
> When the sector first started emerging, Facebook could have battened down the hatches and played a defensive hand. Instead, it did what the bravest companies do: it decided to disrupt itself before the competition did. Yes, buying all the competition.
drdrey 9y ago
> For video, expect the messaging apps to start acting as virtual TV programming guides and remote controls for what will likely be a semi-scheduled ad supported and premium video offering. wat
ulfw 9y ago
Facebook doesn't just have a Whatsapp and Instagram "problem". They have a core Facebook problem. The Facebook app and websites have barely innovated in years and the changes they HAVE made have slowly but steadily eroded the core user experience. What was once a SOCIAL NETWORK - a place where friends could come together or new friendships were made - has become a disjointed "news" feed full of gossip, fake news, Russian propaganda or US politics division. All this interspersed with cat pics and buzzfeed top ups. It's hard to find and enjoy the 'social' aspect of this social network if it's full of oddly unedited "news" footage.
- AckSyn 9y ago
  > Russian propaganda. I'm going to pick this part of your comment out specifically since I largely agree with the rest of it. People have said there's a lot of this going around, but I struggle to see what they mean. What propaganda, specifically Russian, do you mean? I see this kind of baseless conjecture much like I did back in the Cold War. The "communists" or "Russians" were just around the corner kind of nonsense is eerily similar to what people are claiming these days. So really, if you have any actual proof do enlighten us with it.
- jjaredsimpson 9y ago
  10 years ago I would routinely go to facebook and see friends saying what they were planning to do and make plans with them. Facebook served a real purpose in college (we got it my junior year iirc). Now its nearly all trash. People bitching, posting memes, sharing slideshows, etc. The only thing I go there for is 1 specific local group and even that is pointless because there is a discord. Facebook is essentially dead to me, and certainly dead to all my younger cousins 15-19 yos. I feel like I must be missing something, because I have no idea why anyone would visit. It's so negative and low quality.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - jooke 9y ago
    I agree with you about the news feed. FB messenger is still the easiest way to contact people (almost everyone has it, you don't need any information being a name). Events are great for easily informing people of what you're doing. Groups are great for alerting a group of people to some information (basically better mailing lists).
sidcool 9y ago
Humanity has a Facebook problem. But it's not just Facebook at fault. Overconsumption is humanity's trait.
deanclatworthy 9y ago
Messenger apps, more than anything are screaming out for decentralisation. I'm not sure what the solution is - none of the major clients operate outside of a centralised model yet - and it's incredibly difficult to counteract the hive effect when it comes to these kinds of services. Messenger apps are also inherently highly personal. It's your primary means of communication in the digital age. The idea of ads being injected into that experience appalls me.
- rahoulb 9y ago
  They used to be decentralised. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Gtalk were all based on XMPP and they all deliberately switched off the federation feature, then changed protocol.
- mercer 9y ago
  I've posted a link earlier about 'Scuttlebutt' (and the actual client on top of it, Patchwork), which is kind of a decentralized Facebook. It's main innovation, as far as I can tell, is that it uses the real world as a model for its approach. Your content spreads as 'gossip', peer to peer (over LAN/wifi), but also propagates through 'pubs' that are internet-accessible. What first made me interested is that the Patchwork client is quite user-friendly and I've noticed that the relatively small group of current users are not all tech-savvy. That's something of an achievement. Furthermore, some other options I've looked into strike me as either unrealistically decentralized, or too (pragmatically?) centralized. Anyways, even as just as a look into how thing could work different I can highly recommend checking out these types of alternatives!
  - msangi 9y ago
    This is an extremely interesting project, but when I logged in I found it difficult to find someone to interact with. It might be that I joined a pub with very little traffic, I haven't spent much time on it and I plan to have another look when I have some free time.
    - mercer 9y ago
Asdfbla 9y ago
It's really unfortunate that Facebook was allowed to buy WhatsApp. This could have been good news, and maybe it still is since end-to-end encrypted messaging apps may not enable the same data abuse as Facebook's social network. Still would have been nicer if it was a separate entity. Also, pretty insane Instagram numbers. Now that is a service I really don't get, yet considering how many people use it, it can't just be being too old.
- jinushaun 9y ago
  Instagram is Facebook where the news feed is only photos. People want that. People also wanted that out of Facebook, but Facebook became the unsocial network when it tried to clone Twitter so everyone flocked to Instagram to be social again. And also, there are insanely good professional photographers on Instagram and some people just like looking at pretty photos instead of thumbnails grabbed from political news articles.
te_chris 9y ago
They’ve put ads in my fb messenger and damn them to hell for it. I’ve actively stopped using it now.
- petepete 9y ago
  It's the way they broke the mobile web messaging experience that bothered me. Even if I turn on desktop mode the input box deletes the last word when I press space. It used to be fine, minimal and functional. I won't install any fb app, I just want to use it on the web.
  - mgkimsal 9y ago
    > I won't install any fb app, I just want to use it on the web. FB app on ipad disallows pinch/zoom. You better be damn happy with the font sizes they dictate. Or you could stick with the web version.
gaius 9y ago
But, the problem with messaging apps is that no one has really worked out how to monetise them yet Not sure this is true; back in the day BlackBerry used to be the combo of the handset + backend services provided by RIM, including BBM, which they charged a fiver a month for and people didn’t mind paying it. If RIM had been willing to take the risk of extending BBM to other devices (sooner and better) perhaps the whole world would be paying them a vig now. Apple’s iMessage is arguably monetised in advance by hardware sales, and I’ve only recently learned does group chat too.
stctgion 9y ago
Ultimately it is really quite hard to monetize a platform that is so easy to implement with so little product differentiation. People use messaging for messaging. I don't care if you have better emojis. I will certainly leave if you show me adverts. If it really turns out that most people only want simple messaging apps then maybe there isn't that much money in it. Maybe that's ok.
- aembleton 9y ago
  The problem is that there is something of a network effect at play. It might be okay between a couple of people but I'm in some group chats on Whatsapp and Messenger and it would be difficult to move away from those as you'd have to get buy in from everyone in the group.
dustinmoris 9y ago
You know Facebook has a problem when a social network has become anti social. All I see on Facebook is friends of friends fighting over politics with other friends of friends, fake news, stupid animal pics, people with low self esteem hunting for the likes, stupid mainstream commentary, "look at me how awesome I am" status updates, rants where everyone feels to be treated unfairly by the world because of [insert the single characteristic about yourself where you can pretend to be discriminated], etc. I only go to Facebook for one reason now, to check that I'm not missing a birthday of some close extended family. This takes me about 1 minute every day and then I don't visit FB for another 24 hours.
alkonaut 9y ago
Out of curiosity, how much infrastructure goes into making a messaging app? My gut feeling is that you can run a messaging app for a million users on the same infrastructure you would use to run Facebook for 1000 users. So having a messenger app with a ton of users and no monetization is bad, but not that expensive?
- empath75 9y ago
  Near the end, AIM was run by a handful of people at aol and maybe 100 servers in a datacenter at the most.
praulv 9y ago
I always think of it like this: if Google fell apart, the world as we know would change if. If twitter/facebook fell apart, my day to day life would not change in any way.
- kisstheblade 9y ago
  I have played the same mind game. Literally nothing would change for me if facebook/twitter/instagram/snapchat ceased to exist now. Whatsapp I use but with friends who I have other contact info, like a phone number... Google on the other hand is immensely useful. It still amazes me that there are so many billions of advertising dollars to prop up something as useless as facebook and their snowflake-innovator-genius engineers with over 100k salaries.
  - RestlessMind 9y ago
    Then probably you haven't understood one of the biggest user needs - people don't want to "be bored". They constantly want some entertainment as stimulus. Look at people around you (grocery checkout lines or bus stop or subway or Starbucks) - everyone is glued to their phone screens. And Facebook is the ultimate magnet to waste those 2-5 min wait times one has to endure every so often. Earlier, people would get bored waiting in line, or strike conversations with strangers or just muse over random thoughts. No more. All that attention has gone to their smartphones. And advertisers are simply following those eyeballs. Since Facebook manages to capture so much attention of so many humans, they rake in billions.
dbuder 9y ago
I still resent being pushed into two phone apps for FB.

102 points by imartin2k 9y ago

I didn't quite understand, what is the problem with Instagram? It's too popular? Or just that it's not dropping in popularity vs Facebook (due to their recent adjustments)? I wouldn't consider Instagram to be a messaging app - in fact they're spinning off another app from Instagram just to do messaging (because it's not exactly great at that). It sounds to me more like Facebook might have some problem and Instagram is just doing it's own thing (as are Facebook's other services).

vanilla_nut 9y ago
Somehow I completely missed the news about the standalone Instagram messaging app (called Direct, for anybody interested). Looks like I should jump ship just like I did with Facebook before it's too late.

bognition 9y ago

Honestly with all the changes to Instagram I find myself using the app less and less. The changes I'm thinking about are ads in the feed and random content to drive engagement. Both of these things are driving me to use the app less. I'm realizing that Facebook does two things builds a social network and then strip mines it off all value.

aaronblohowiak 9y ago
i hate having to scroll past content i have seen in order to see content that i havent, and the out-of-order shenanigans.
wanderr 9y ago
Non linear feed makes it crappy for me. Now I'm guaranteed to miss stuff from people I care about, just like on FB.
- wwweston 9y ago
  This. Why, why, why? I mean, I'm sure there's an ostensible reason. Maybe there's metrics that show it increases engagement (which I'd believe, since it kindof fits with the studies that say an uncertain reward is more addictive than completely predictable reward). Maybe adding a special sauce ML algorithm to the feed generation process lets a product manager add a bullet point to their resume and yearly review. But I kindof think the reason has to be something that is not going to be particularly user driven or otherwise reflect well on FB, because as far as I can tell most users who are conscious about it reaaaally would like to be able to at least set a setting that would give them a strict chronological feed. And yet, that's never an option, and FB never even seems to talk about reasons why they know their way is totally awesome.
  - justAnotherNET 9y ago
    If it was better for users they’d toot their own horn about it. It’s more likely Ad revenue is x% higher so they do it that way.
  - vanderZwan 9y ago
    > Maybe there's metrics that show it increases engagement (which I'd believe, since it kindof fits with the studies that say an uncertain reward is more addictive than completely predictable reward) I wonder how much of those metrics are false positives due to people scrolling more in frustration to find the user updates that they are missing
    - lou1306 9y ago
      You might be on to something. "Hey, did you see what $mutual_friend has posted on Facebook this morning?" Cue 15 minutes of scrolling past two-weeks-old posts
      - vanderZwan 9y ago
        Realises they could have searched for that friend and opened their profile Cue 15 more minutes of scrolling before realising they're two months back because they missed the actual post, because Facebook does not show every update by default
zwily 9y ago
For some reason I have never seen an ad in Instagram. (And yes, I do use it...)
- eat_veggies 9y ago
  I see ads on Instagram all the time. Just scrolling through two days of my feed (but it's hard to tell, because it's not chronological anymore), I see some ads from therealcost, xbox, lovepop cards, kelloggs frosted flakes, m&m's chocolate, some music festival, instagram itself, and six posts from accounts I don't follow, as part of its new 'Recommended for You' (aka garbage I don't care to see) sections. Perhaps I fit their demographics, so I get more of them.
- graeme 9y ago
  I used to see them, but recently they have all vanished. No idea why. Maybe I was too low engagement. The addition of stories does make it feel busier though. I'm enjoying my time on it much less than I used to. Even after muting stories from people whose stories I wasn't interested in watching.
- tonypace 9y ago
  I'm a teacher in Asia. My students complain mightily about the sudden deluge of ads. They experience it as being much worse than Facebook.
- Renaud 9y ago
  That's strange, I get a sponsored content like every 5 to 6 pictures. It's annoying to the point that it's about to be the last straw for me. While there are talented photographers on Instagram, the app is really poor as a way to appreciate photography (can't zoom, no iPad app to better view content) and it's also poor as a community, favouring instead over-consumption and poor engagement (low quality comments, if any). Then there are the shenanigans that game user engagement, like delaying likes to force people to check the app more often or nagging me to enable notifications every single time I open the app. It has become little more than an ad-delivery platform.
ceejayoz 9y ago
Yeah, the magic feels gone. They just announced they're (after years of holding the line) opening up the API for publishing photos, so it'll be a spammy feed of corporate stuff very soon.
vanilla_nut 9y ago
I feel very similarly. It reminds me of facebook's transition to the News Feed -- even without ads, the introduction of a content algorithm ruined my main use case for the platform: following just my very central friend group and seeing everything they post. On the plus side, Facebook has now taught me (twice!) that they (or any other "social media" company) can't be trusted. Now I'm just deciding whether I should give up social media altogether. I already deleted my Facebook since it became completely useless over the past few years (friends don't post, I don't see their posts when they do, notifications are useless and diluted), I'm considering deleting my instagram (far, far, far too many ads; friends don't post as much)... is it worth it to try to build out a presence on Mastodon? Or is that doomed, too?
taylorexpander 9y ago
For some reason, the ads I’m seeing on Instagram are creepily relevant for me. I just checked and literally it just shows me advertisements for furniture (I like design…) and plants (I like plants…). I’ve actually bought a plant related thing from one of them, and the ads that show up actually do make me stop and look at them. On the other hand, it’s also showing me advertisements for watches. I have no idea why, because I hate wearing watches and I’ve definitely never googled for watches before.
- castle-bravo 9y ago
  Maybe it knows you're always late for meetings and appointments and is giving you a subtle hint that you need to up your game and get a watch. ;) That, or their model has found a correlation between liking chairs, plants, and watches but doesn't account for your unusual distaste for watches. Take heart, facebook doesn't know you well enough to convince you to hand over your wallet to their customers (yet).

jlmorton 9y ago

> Messaging apps are the third phase of platforms on which digital audiences congregate. First came websites, then social networks and now messaging apps—which collectively accounted for 7.7 billion monthly active users (MAUs) at the end of 2017, up from 6.6 billion in 2016 and 5.5 billion in 2015. This is a massive segment that continues to grow at pace. That's a pretty misleading claim. I guess I sort of understand what's being expressed here, but it feels weird to just add up every platform's monthly active users and come up with a number larger than the population of the Earth.

vanderZwan 9y ago
Also, chat programs are older than social networks. You could even say it's the only application with direct lineage to using a phone as a phone (and let's not forget about texting). So how can they be the third phase after regular websites and then social networks?
- autokad 9y ago
  yeah, the best parts of the internet in the late 90s was chats and messenger apps. remember excite chat? i loved that, but mostly used irc. messenger wise, started using icq but people (me included) hated remembering a huge number to log in. AIM was great though, and msn messenger was great because it tied right into your email too.
  - pault 9y ago
    My brother and I spent hours every evening on a chat service called the Palace. I don't know what happened to it but it was probably responsible for at least a full point off my grade average. :)
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  Somewhere ICQ is rolling in its grave.
  - paulie_a 9y ago

niftich 9y ago

The title doesn't match the article's content: the content primarily notes that Facebook's own messaging apps Messenger, WhatsApp, and seemingly, in the article's interpretation, Instagram-as-a-messaging app are siphoning screen-time away from Facebook itself, but Instagram is the least likely to present an a true threat. After all, Instagram lends itself well to high-margin brand advertising, interest-based advertising, and hyperlocal content. It's hardly a problem that certain demographics spend less time on Facebook and go on Instagram instead, especially if these demographics are quite valuable on their own. Even the article admits that the more traditional messaging networks like Messenger and WhatsApp are harder to monetize. They have had some experiments the past [1] but with so many competitors, user resistance is a risk. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13489098#13489554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13489098#13489554

mromanuk 9y ago

> When the sector first started emerging, Facebook could have battened down the hatches and played a defensive hand. Instead, it did what the bravest companies do: it decided to disrupt itself before the competition did. Yes, buying all the competition.

drdrey 9y ago

> For video, expect the messaging apps to start acting as virtual TV programming guides and remote controls for what will likely be a semi-scheduled ad supported and premium video offering. wat

ulfw 9y ago

Facebook doesn't just have a Whatsapp and Instagram "problem". They have a core Facebook problem. The Facebook app and websites have barely innovated in years and the changes they HAVE made have slowly but steadily eroded the core user experience. What was once a SOCIAL NETWORK - a place where friends could come together or new friendships were made - has become a disjointed "news" feed full of gossip, fake news, Russian propaganda or US politics division. All this interspersed with cat pics and buzzfeed top ups. It's hard to find and enjoy the 'social' aspect of this social network if it's full of oddly unedited "news" footage.

AckSyn 9y ago
> Russian propaganda. I'm going to pick this part of your comment out specifically since I largely agree with the rest of it. People have said there's a lot of this going around, but I struggle to see what they mean. What propaganda, specifically Russian, do you mean? I see this kind of baseless conjecture much like I did back in the Cold War. The "communists" or "Russians" were just around the corner kind of nonsense is eerily similar to what people are claiming these days. So really, if you have any actual proof do enlighten us with it.
jjaredsimpson 9y ago
10 years ago I would routinely go to facebook and see friends saying what they were planning to do and make plans with them. Facebook served a real purpose in college (we got it my junior year iirc). Now its nearly all trash. People bitching, posting memes, sharing slideshows, etc. The only thing I go there for is 1 specific local group and even that is pointless because there is a discord. Facebook is essentially dead to me, and certainly dead to all my younger cousins 15-19 yos. I feel like I must be missing something, because I have no idea why anyone would visit. It's so negative and low quality.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jooke 9y ago
  I agree with you about the news feed. FB messenger is still the easiest way to contact people (almost everyone has it, you don't need any information being a name). Events are great for easily informing people of what you're doing. Groups are great for alerting a group of people to some information (basically better mailing lists).

sidcool 9y ago

Humanity has a Facebook problem. But it's not just Facebook at fault. Overconsumption is humanity's trait.

deanclatworthy 9y ago

Messenger apps, more than anything are screaming out for decentralisation. I'm not sure what the solution is - none of the major clients operate outside of a centralised model yet - and it's incredibly difficult to counteract the hive effect when it comes to these kinds of services. Messenger apps are also inherently highly personal. It's your primary means of communication in the digital age. The idea of ads being injected into that experience appalls me.

rahoulb 9y ago
They used to be decentralised. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Gtalk were all based on XMPP and they all deliberately switched off the federation feature, then changed protocol.
mercer 9y ago
I've posted a link earlier about 'Scuttlebutt' (and the actual client on top of it, Patchwork), which is kind of a decentralized Facebook. It's main innovation, as far as I can tell, is that it uses the real world as a model for its approach. Your content spreads as 'gossip', peer to peer (over LAN/wifi), but also propagates through 'pubs' that are internet-accessible. What first made me interested is that the Patchwork client is quite user-friendly and I've noticed that the relatively small group of current users are not all tech-savvy. That's something of an achievement. Furthermore, some other options I've looked into strike me as either unrealistically decentralized, or too (pragmatically?) centralized. Anyways, even as just as a look into how thing could work different I can highly recommend checking out these types of alternatives!
- msangi 9y ago
  This is an extremely interesting project, but when I logged in I found it difficult to find someone to interact with. It might be that I joined a pub with very little traffic, I haven't spent much time on it and I plan to have another look when I have some free time.
  - mercer 9y ago

Asdfbla 9y ago

It's really unfortunate that Facebook was allowed to buy WhatsApp. This could have been good news, and maybe it still is since end-to-end encrypted messaging apps may not enable the same data abuse as Facebook's social network. Still would have been nicer if it was a separate entity. Also, pretty insane Instagram numbers. Now that is a service I really don't get, yet considering how many people use it, it can't just be being too old.

jinushaun 9y ago
Instagram is Facebook where the news feed is only photos. People want that. People also wanted that out of Facebook, but Facebook became the unsocial network when it tried to clone Twitter so everyone flocked to Instagram to be social again. And also, there are insanely good professional photographers on Instagram and some people just like looking at pretty photos instead of thumbnails grabbed from political news articles.

te_chris 9y ago

They’ve put ads in my fb messenger and damn them to hell for it. I’ve actively stopped using it now.

petepete 9y ago
It's the way they broke the mobile web messaging experience that bothered me. Even if I turn on desktop mode the input box deletes the last word when I press space. It used to be fine, minimal and functional. I won't install any fb app, I just want to use it on the web.
- mgkimsal 9y ago
  > I won't install any fb app, I just want to use it on the web. FB app on ipad disallows pinch/zoom. You better be damn happy with the font sizes they dictate. Or you could stick with the web version.

gaius 9y ago

But, the problem with messaging apps is that no one has really worked out how to monetise them yet Not sure this is true; back in the day BlackBerry used to be the combo of the handset + backend services provided by RIM, including BBM, which they charged a fiver a month for and people didn’t mind paying it. If RIM had been willing to take the risk of extending BBM to other devices (sooner and better) perhaps the whole world would be paying them a vig now. Apple’s iMessage is arguably monetised in advance by hardware sales, and I’ve only recently learned does group chat too.

stctgion 9y ago

Ultimately it is really quite hard to monetize a platform that is so easy to implement with so little product differentiation. People use messaging for messaging. I don't care if you have better emojis. I will certainly leave if you show me adverts. If it really turns out that most people only want simple messaging apps then maybe there isn't that much money in it. Maybe that's ok.

aembleton 9y ago
The problem is that there is something of a network effect at play. It might be okay between a couple of people but I'm in some group chats on Whatsapp and Messenger and it would be difficult to move away from those as you'd have to get buy in from everyone in the group.

dustinmoris 9y ago

You know Facebook has a problem when a social network has become anti social. All I see on Facebook is friends of friends fighting over politics with other friends of friends, fake news, stupid animal pics, people with low self esteem hunting for the likes, stupid mainstream commentary, "look at me how awesome I am" status updates, rants where everyone feels to be treated unfairly by the world because of [insert the single characteristic about yourself where you can pretend to be discriminated], etc. I only go to Facebook for one reason now, to check that I'm not missing a birthday of some close extended family. This takes me about 1 minute every day and then I don't visit FB for another 24 hours.

alkonaut 9y ago

Out of curiosity, how much infrastructure goes into making a messaging app? My gut feeling is that you can run a messaging app for a million users on the same infrastructure you would use to run Facebook for 1000 users. So having a messenger app with a ton of users and no monetization is bad, but not that expensive?

empath75 9y ago
Near the end, AIM was run by a handful of people at aol and maybe 100 servers in a datacenter at the most.

praulv 9y ago

I always think of it like this: if Google fell apart, the world as we know would change if. If twitter/facebook fell apart, my day to day life would not change in any way.

kisstheblade 9y ago
I have played the same mind game. Literally nothing would change for me if facebook/twitter/instagram/snapchat ceased to exist now. Whatsapp I use but with friends who I have other contact info, like a phone number... Google on the other hand is immensely useful. It still amazes me that there are so many billions of advertising dollars to prop up something as useless as facebook and their snowflake-innovator-genius engineers with over 100k salaries.
- RestlessMind 9y ago
  Then probably you haven't understood one of the biggest user needs - people don't want to "be bored". They constantly want some entertainment as stimulus. Look at people around you (grocery checkout lines or bus stop or subway or Starbucks) - everyone is glued to their phone screens. And Facebook is the ultimate magnet to waste those 2-5 min wait times one has to endure every so often. Earlier, people would get bored waiting in line, or strike conversations with strangers or just muse over random thoughts. No more. All that attention has gone to their smartphones. And advertisers are simply following those eyeballs. Since Facebook manages to capture so much attention of so many humans, they rake in billions.

dbuder 9y ago

I still resent being pushed into two phone apps for FB.