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Facebook has no serious competition at the moment other than Snapchat. Young people are still using Instagram and Messenger. Ironically, the calls for regulatio

Facebook has no serious competition at the moment other than Snapchat. Young people are still using Instagram and Messenger. Ironically, the calls for regulation might actually end up helping Facebook in the end as they will make the barriers to entry higher.

chrischen 9y ago
Instagram is a completely different app, usage, and completely different UI/UX from Facebook. Facebook's problems are caused by Facebook (website)'s design, trajectory, and business model. It doesn't have anything to do with inherent evilness in the company itself.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- hsljekskfh 9y ago
  i'm personally interested to hear why you think it's so different. i don't use fb or ig and don't understand how they're different, from my understanding they both seem to be feeds of photos and memes from your friends (minus the new stories feature)
- socialist_coder 9y ago
  I'm replying to the dead comment. The Facebook site is evil and should be destroyed because of 2 reasons, in my opinion. Firstly, the news feed is solely designed to get you to stay on the site for longer. And what that means is you get an echo chamber. So, idiot people get idiot posts that agree with them. It's not just a problem on one side of the political spectrum, it's a problem for any extreme view. Anti-vaxxers, left wing communists, and right wing fascists all get into their echo chamber and never get out. Secondly, the advertising platform that Facebook has created is too powerful. It lets you micro-target people in a way that is absolutely perfect for political ads. You find people vulnerable to an emotional message and bombard them with your emotionally responsive ads. Facebook ads are good for non-political things as well, but in this case, we'll have to throw the baby out with the bathwater I think.
  - MarkMc 9y ago
    Do we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater? We can have regulation that bans the use personal information for political ads but allows it for toothpaste ads
    - socialist_coder 9y ago
      I hope so. My concern is that it is hard to define what a political ad is sometimes. For example, if you have an ad that claims that some specific ethnic group gets food stamps more than another, is that a political ad? Because those are the kinds of ads that Russia was buying.
- willvarfar 9y ago
  Instagram and Facebook share data; they are two interfaces to the same big pot of profiling data https://help.instagram.com/833836199971426 https://help.instagram.com/833836199971426
JDWolf 9y ago
MS LinkedIn seems like a pretty strong competitor to me. Seems like their logo/like buttons/messaging/user experience is converging that direction. Perhaps they will offer Office-Ville or Kanban-Crush-Saga.
- Roybot 9y ago
  When social media platforms are optimizing for user engagement, it's not surprising that you're seeing the same features. With enough A/B testing they all discover the same thing and end up on the same path. The FB feed has become a bunch of memes/videos, increasing engagement. It won't be surprising once the LinkedIn feed becomes saturated with videos as well. I don't see LinkedIn as a strict competitor to FB. They're both social platforms but different.
- mygo 9y ago
  LinkedIn is not a competitor to Facebook. Why? Context. When you go on facebook you’re in a social state of mind. When you go on LinkedIn you’re in a formal / business state of mind. It’s a glorified resume and socially conservative af. That fact alone means that, even if LinkedIn has the same exact user base as facebook, we are not going to use LinkedIn like we do facebook. Facebook profits off of our attention and engagement. Facebook’s real competition is who or whatever holds our attention. Whoever manages to make us give facebook less of our time. LinkedIn does not really have our attention like facebook does. We set up a profile and leave and maybe get on it when job hunting or when someone writes us a recommendation. There is no “LinkedIn addiction.” But you wanna know what website has been getting even more and more of our attention? Netflix lol. Netflix can take hours out of our day and during those hours we may be so absorbed in the show that we’re not really engaging with facebook. So yeah, Netflix is a bigger competitor to facebook than LinkedIn.
  - FullyFunctional 9y ago
    So, HN then? (I'm only half-kidding. I have an unhealthy addiction to HN)
    - 9y ago
tilertex 9y ago
There's a reason Mark Zuckerberg himself came out and said he's "actually not sure we shouldn't be regulated" and it's not because he has genuine concerns about his users privacy. It's because regulation increases the barrier to entry. It means less chance of some college students starting an app that can dethrone Facebook.
- cies 9y ago
  > and it's not because he has genuine concerns about his users privacy. yups. FB users are to FB, what cows are to milk farms. main difference is that FB users are free to go, and cows are in some sort of bonded labour/slavery construction, although it is not commonly called that way.
gaius 9y ago
Facebook has no serious competition at the moment The competition is “socialising the pre-Facebook way”
- billysielu 9y ago
  Not socializing so much is also valid.
- someoneelse987 9y ago
  To me what changed with Facebook was that the local address book that I had on my phone became a tree in a central graph owned by a company and I was fine giving out that information. Today who could muster up the trust needed for me to let them know about everyone I know? I think no such company exists or ever will. I have no social internet accounts left except for this one. I even recently deleted my Linkedin account even though that is bad for my career (?). I just don't want to feel raped all the time. I keep getting Linkedin-ish head-hunting emails though but I'm sure that'll clear up in a year or so. If I'm ever socializing again on the internet, give me something that doesn't rape me in the *. Otherwise I'm fine just socializing IRL. I hope we are a void and that something new is about to happen.
  - robin_reala 9y ago
    I’ve never had a LinkedIn account (and have got myself into some sort of internal blacklist) and I’ve never felt disadvantaged career-wise or even been asked if I have an account.
- therein 9y ago
  Let me download MSN Messenger. I remember there was a J2ME client for my Nokia 3650.
  - znpy 9y ago
    I honestly miss MSN Messenger. Fond memories.
MarkMc 9y ago
If people were to switch from using Facebook to Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp it would be hugely destructive to Facebook's market cap.
narrator 9y ago
When resentment builds against an entrenched company, and a good alternative comes along, the shift can be pretty rapid. The Quark-X-press to Adobe InDesign exodus was particularly fast.
pnutjam 9y ago
Check out mewe.com
oneeyedpigeon 9y ago
> Ironically, the calls for regulation might actually end up helping Facebook in the end as they will make the barriers to entry higher. The barrier will only be higher for potential services that want to avoid those regulations. If the market moves in a 'wants more privacy' direction, barrier to entry shouldn't be a problem.
gldalmaso 9y ago
At least in Brazil I think there is serious competition in the form of WhatsApp. It allows plenty of the things that FB initially brought to the table in the form of family, friend and work groups where people actually share their personal stuff now, while in FB people just mostly show off some generic things and share news articles in their bubble. I would say WhatsApp right now is a lot more social than FB is. When you meet someone new you ask them for their WhatsApp number, not to add them to FB. Sure FB owns WhatsApp but I don't think they can leverage it financially nearly as much. If ads start to pop up on WhatsApp people will simply flock to different messengers with similar functionality.
- ascorbic 9y ago
  Whether or not a WhatsApp user is more valuable to them than a FB one, there's no way you can call it serious competition if they own it.

chrischen 9y ago

Instagram is a completely different app, usage, and completely different UI/UX from Facebook. Facebook's problems are caused by Facebook (website)'s design, trajectory, and business model. It doesn't have anything to do with inherent evilness in the company itself.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
hsljekskfh 9y ago
i'm personally interested to hear why you think it's so different. i don't use fb or ig and don't understand how they're different, from my understanding they both seem to be feeds of photos and memes from your friends (minus the new stories feature)
socialist_coder 9y ago
I'm replying to the dead comment. The Facebook site is evil and should be destroyed because of 2 reasons, in my opinion. Firstly, the news feed is solely designed to get you to stay on the site for longer. And what that means is you get an echo chamber. So, idiot people get idiot posts that agree with them. It's not just a problem on one side of the political spectrum, it's a problem for any extreme view. Anti-vaxxers, left wing communists, and right wing fascists all get into their echo chamber and never get out. Secondly, the advertising platform that Facebook has created is too powerful. It lets you micro-target people in a way that is absolutely perfect for political ads. You find people vulnerable to an emotional message and bombard them with your emotionally responsive ads. Facebook ads are good for non-political things as well, but in this case, we'll have to throw the baby out with the bathwater I think.
- MarkMc 9y ago
  Do we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater? We can have regulation that bans the use personal information for political ads but allows it for toothpaste ads
  - socialist_coder 9y ago
    I hope so. My concern is that it is hard to define what a political ad is sometimes. For example, if you have an ad that claims that some specific ethnic group gets food stamps more than another, is that a political ad? Because those are the kinds of ads that Russia was buying.
willvarfar 9y ago
Instagram and Facebook share data; they are two interfaces to the same big pot of profiling data https://help.instagram.com/833836199971426 https://help.instagram.com/833836199971426

JDWolf 9y ago

MS LinkedIn seems like a pretty strong competitor to me. Seems like their logo/like buttons/messaging/user experience is converging that direction. Perhaps they will offer Office-Ville or Kanban-Crush-Saga.

Roybot 9y ago
When social media platforms are optimizing for user engagement, it's not surprising that you're seeing the same features. With enough A/B testing they all discover the same thing and end up on the same path. The FB feed has become a bunch of memes/videos, increasing engagement. It won't be surprising once the LinkedIn feed becomes saturated with videos as well. I don't see LinkedIn as a strict competitor to FB. They're both social platforms but different.
mygo 9y ago
LinkedIn is not a competitor to Facebook. Why? Context. When you go on facebook you’re in a social state of mind. When you go on LinkedIn you’re in a formal / business state of mind. It’s a glorified resume and socially conservative af. That fact alone means that, even if LinkedIn has the same exact user base as facebook, we are not going to use LinkedIn like we do facebook. Facebook profits off of our attention and engagement. Facebook’s real competition is who or whatever holds our attention. Whoever manages to make us give facebook less of our time. LinkedIn does not really have our attention like facebook does. We set up a profile and leave and maybe get on it when job hunting or when someone writes us a recommendation. There is no “LinkedIn addiction.” But you wanna know what website has been getting even more and more of our attention? Netflix lol. Netflix can take hours out of our day and during those hours we may be so absorbed in the show that we’re not really engaging with facebook. So yeah, Netflix is a bigger competitor to facebook than LinkedIn.
- FullyFunctional 9y ago
  So, HN then? (I'm only half-kidding. I have an unhealthy addiction to HN)
  - 9y ago

tilertex 9y ago

There's a reason Mark Zuckerberg himself came out and said he's "actually not sure we shouldn't be regulated" and it's not because he has genuine concerns about his users privacy. It's because regulation increases the barrier to entry. It means less chance of some college students starting an app that can dethrone Facebook.

cies 9y ago
> and it's not because he has genuine concerns about his users privacy. yups. FB users are to FB, what cows are to milk farms. main difference is that FB users are free to go, and cows are in some sort of bonded labour/slavery construction, although it is not commonly called that way.

gaius 9y ago

Facebook has no serious competition at the moment The competition is “socialising the pre-Facebook way”

billysielu 9y ago
Not socializing so much is also valid.
someoneelse987 9y ago
To me what changed with Facebook was that the local address book that I had on my phone became a tree in a central graph owned by a company and I was fine giving out that information. Today who could muster up the trust needed for me to let them know about everyone I know? I think no such company exists or ever will. I have no social internet accounts left except for this one. I even recently deleted my Linkedin account even though that is bad for my career (?). I just don't want to feel raped all the time. I keep getting Linkedin-ish head-hunting emails though but I'm sure that'll clear up in a year or so. If I'm ever socializing again on the internet, give me something that doesn't rape me in the *. Otherwise I'm fine just socializing IRL. I hope we are a void and that something new is about to happen.
- robin_reala 9y ago
  I’ve never had a LinkedIn account (and have got myself into some sort of internal blacklist) and I’ve never felt disadvantaged career-wise or even been asked if I have an account.
therein 9y ago
Let me download MSN Messenger. I remember there was a J2ME client for my Nokia 3650.
- znpy 9y ago
  I honestly miss MSN Messenger. Fond memories.

MarkMc 9y ago

If people were to switch from using Facebook to Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp it would be hugely destructive to Facebook's market cap.

narrator 9y ago

When resentment builds against an entrenched company, and a good alternative comes along, the shift can be pretty rapid. The Quark-X-press to Adobe InDesign exodus was particularly fast.

pnutjam 9y ago

Check out mewe.com

oneeyedpigeon 9y ago

> Ironically, the calls for regulation might actually end up helping Facebook in the end as they will make the barriers to entry higher. The barrier will only be higher for potential services that want to avoid those regulations. If the market moves in a 'wants more privacy' direction, barrier to entry shouldn't be a problem.

gldalmaso 9y ago

At least in Brazil I think there is serious competition in the form of WhatsApp. It allows plenty of the things that FB initially brought to the table in the form of family, friend and work groups where people actually share their personal stuff now, while in FB people just mostly show off some generic things and share news articles in their bubble. I would say WhatsApp right now is a lot more social than FB is. When you meet someone new you ask them for their WhatsApp number, not to add them to FB. Sure FB owns WhatsApp but I don't think they can leverage it financially nearly as much. If ads start to pop up on WhatsApp people will simply flock to different messengers with similar functionality.

ascorbic 9y ago
Whether or not a WhatsApp user is more valuable to them than a FB one, there's no way you can call it serious competition if they own it.