6 ms·

I remember reading an article (somewhere) years ago that criticized Silicon Valley for spending so much money to hire bright people to design a better way to cl

I remember reading an article (somewhere) years ago that criticized Silicon Valley for spending so much money to hire bright people to design a better way to click on ads. I thought that was a real dystopian future. Now Facebook is finally dying... I haven't been on it in ~6 months. People are paying for more and more subscriptions. Nextcloud is becoming a better and better replacement for Gapps. DuckDuckGo is good enough I can 'google' for 95% of my stuff on it. Firefox is now competitive with Chrome. I think we are better off now then we were a few years ago.

Freak_NL 9y ago
> Now Facebook is finally dying… Doubtful. Facebook is not just facebook.com, it's the whole package of FB Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. People may uninstall the mobile app and limit their Facebook access to their laptops or desktop computers (that's a popular response among my colleagues), but I don't even know anyone who has actually deleted their account — aside from the folk who never had one, like me. I also get the impression that usage of Facebook and related services differs greatly from country to country, and from demographic to demographic. This article¹ from 2014 on WhatsApp usage isn't joking; In countries like mine (the Netherlands) not using Facebook-owned WhatsApp (like me) is rather exceptional. If I had kids they would miss out on basically everything (playdates, birthday parties, changes in schedule for sports/scouts/etc.; not to mention becoming social recluses because all their peers (or their parents when they are younger) are on Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp) if I kept refusing to use Facebook's offerings. Facebook is not going anywhere soon (although I wish it was). 1: https://www.wired.com/2014/02/whatsapp-rules-rest-world/ https://www.wired.com/2014/02/whatsapp-rules-rest-world/
- drawkbox 9y ago
  Facebook is also Oculus, React, Onavo, Facebook Live and their video platform is trying to compete with Youtube, and they have bought and consumed lots of technology, developers and data from companies that do analytics, deep learning, tracking, location, development tools (even some good ones they EOL'd like Parse) and more. If the Facebook site/app goes the way of AOL/MySpace, which it won't for a long time, they have already prepared for that.
  - d33 9y ago
    It would be enough for me if it declined into the confused and nonelastic state Microsoft was in around the times of Vista. That was enough for Android to appear and take over, forcing a paradigm shift.
    - drawkbox 9y ago
      Yeah competition is good. Temporary monopolies can be sometimes good like AT&T building telco/software with Bell Labs and C++ etc, Microsoft with the desktop and getting people online, early ISPs to get broadband started, but they usually end up abusing that position eventually. Some companies get greedy when they get the market leader monopoly power and it can lead to less innovation if they focus on limiting competition rather than beating the open market. Microsoft started to abuse their position eventhough they had won. Then Microsoft got slowed down both from the anti-trust/monopoly DOJ/EU strainer and the subsequent miss of iPhone/Android mobile market. Microsoft got humbled and returned to innovation and is a better company for it today, but has lost power they once held. That speedbump allowed Google (Android/Cloud/Search), Apple (iOS), Amazon (Cloud), and more to rise. Ultimately slowing down Microsoft even a bit re-opened innovation and bettered everyone's quality of life when they had started stiff-arming and blocking competition rather than innovating. There is a lesson to companies that get the market monopoly or top positioning, stay competitive and don't slow down innovation by attacking others, continue to research and develop and innovate. Resorting to limiting others to get ahead in competition makes the companies forget why they are the market leader, win in the open market and innovate to stay the leader. Companies on monopoly/market leader watch: Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and others in tech. Some that have already gone beyond acceptable limitations of stifling innovation include Comcast, Verizon and AT&T and are in need of breaking up again as they turned to favored markets rather than neutral. These companies are not winning with better products but winning with bribes, lobbying and limiting innovation only. As long as companies stay focused on innovations and winning in the fair competitive market, not with limiting others beyond open fair market competition, they will stay ahead and not forget why they are the leader. Market leaders should innovate instead of being the bully.
    - zombieprocesses 9y ago
- Feniks 9y ago
  So far there hasn't been any ads in WhatsApp. Dutch people are not known for their loyalty or willingness to spend money so I have no idea how Facebook hopes to monetize it. WhatsApp took the market from SMS (a billion dollar cashcow for telcos) in months. Someone else can take on WhatsApp.
- machinehermit 9y ago
  Facebook is "dieing" as much horny guys acting inappropriate towards women has been "solved". Basically, not at all unless you live in some strange activist bubble that has nothing to do with the real world. All this really did was create a nice buying opportunity yesterday in FB stock.
  - galdosdi 9y ago
    You're probably right, though I'm sad about that. For a lot of people FB use seems almost like cigarettes. I mean, not that order of magnitude, but same idea. Doesn't really matter what bad news comes out because it's so habit forming. The bad news has to be truly existential to make a real difference.
  - internetman55 9y ago
    It doesn't seem understood here that for many Facebook is for events, sharing some life updates with friends and family, and messenger, not compulsively scrolling your newsfeed to find articles about Trump's plan or something
- galdosdi 9y ago
  They'll "Alphabetize" and become more of a holding company, but that doesn't mean the core product is immortal. Berkshire Hathaway is strong as a company, but they haven't produced clothing fabric in a very long time.
- jgaa 9y ago
  The scary part about Facebook dying - and they will at some time - if not now, then later - is who acquires them. Where will all that very personal data about everyone find a new home?
walrus01 9y ago
I think that in aggregate we are not, considering the rapid rate of growth of Facebook in the developing world, where for many low income people, Facebook and FB messenger ARE THE INTERNET. Walled garden achieved. Example: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/the-facebook-loving-farmers-of-myanmar/424812/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/the-f...
- ehnto 9y ago
  If Facebook does fail and fold, I will be looking toward these communities with great anticipation of what fills the void. Human ingenuity will prevail, and these communities will communicate just as well. My hope is for small tech communities to be inspired for smaller scale, more community friendly technology specific to their problems. At least that's an optimistic view. Of course some other evil corp could fill the gap. Who knows.
- csdreamer7 9y ago
  I thought there was push back against that. India I know rejected it. https://www.cnet.com/news/why-india-doesnt-want-free-basics/ https://www.cnet.com/news/why-india-doesnt-want-free-basics/ And this came up when I searched for the above link. Seems the walled garden has been partially ended. https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/04/facebooks-internet-org-project-is-now-a-platform/amp/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/04/facebooks-internet-org-pro...
untog 9y ago
Facebook is most certainly not dying. This is a short term blip that it will almost certainly recover from. Even if it ends up being more closely regulated (which I'd support) it could still be a very successful business.
- meddlepal 9y ago
  We are in for some hot takes over the next 12 months: - stock price up? Facebook is not dying. It's stronger than ever!!! -stock price down? Facebook is toast!
  - jfoutz 9y ago
    Stock price or seizure of documents? Not implicated in interfering with a French election? Stronger than ever!!! Called to testify before the House of Lords? Facebook is toast!
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  AOL and MySpace are still around. One possibility is that Facebook could experience a similar asymptotically slow death, gradually losing more DAUs than they gain, but never quite dying.
  - hinkley 9y ago
    Everyone who remembers AOL will be dead in another fifty years. So there’s hope.
    - xboxnolifes 9y ago
      Sure hope I'm not.
      - hinkley 9y ago
        When you say you remember AOL, do you mean that it exists or that you remember using it? If the latter, where can we send condolence cards or what is your favorite charity? (I have friends my age that used it, but I think most of us will be dead in 50 years. We could live longer if we took better care of ourselves, but not much)
TeMPOraL 9y ago
With retargeting being rampant, so much talent locked in adtech industry that's still growing strong and keeps innovating new ways to hurt other people, I'm not sure we're better off.
- dorgo 9y ago
  how does adtech industry hurt people? Btw there are ad blocker for those who don't like ads.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Directly, by wasting people's time and trying to manipulate them into buying a good or service they don't need. Quite often, those goods or services are subpar and a bad fit for the buyer (but a better sale for the seller). For each one of us who knows how to run an ad blocker, there's someone else who will get convinced by the ads and will sign up to a bad deal, possibly leading to a scam or a payday loan. Indirectly, through erosion of privacy and pretty much constructing a global high-tech surveillance apparatus, ready to be taken over by any evil government in the future. Basically, what this talk was about. Indirectly, through criminals who exploit marketers' data, as it inevitably leaks in data breaches. Indirectly, through enabling even more waste of precious resources in a stupid zero-sum game of customer acquisition.
    - majewsky 9y ago
      Indirectly, because ad networks are one of the most powerful malware distribution vectors. (Instead of hacking a website and putting your malware there, you can hack an ad network and put your malware on thousands of websites. Also, I'd expect most ad networks to have only very small budgets for infosec, or none at all.)
  - Feniks 9y ago
    Yep some of the brightest minds of our generation are fighting the good fight.
da02 9y ago
What do you mean by, "People are paying for more and more subscriptions"? Nextcloud subscriptions?
- Too 9y ago
  Netflix instead of YouTube
  - Freak_NL 9y ago
    Isn't this more a case of Netflix instead of traditional TV packages on/over cable/fiber/ether?
  - csdreamer7 9y ago
    Newspapers too.
  - isostatic 9y ago
    How is YouTube red performing?
    - majewsky 9y ago
      No idea, I still cannot subscribe to it in Germany.
      - nasredin 9y ago
        There's your answer then: not very well!!!
hkmurakami 9y ago
What's the marketshare for each of the things you've listed? Do they even have 1%?
- yoklov 9y ago
  Firefox is certainly more than 1%
  - majewsky 9y ago
    Firefox is at about 6% market share: http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share It's higher in some countries, e.g. Germany traditionally has a much stronger Firefox presence. It used to be 40%+, now around 20%.
scardine 9y ago
Perhaps you are remembering the famous quote from Jeffrey Hammerbacher[1] who left Facebook to found Cloudera[2]: “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads" (at a Business Week interview in 2011 [3]). The quote is a parody on another famous quote from the opening lines of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl": > I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, > dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, > Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Hammerbacher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Hammerbacher [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudera [3] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:26KzMa2hCfIJ:https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-04-14/this-tech-bubble-is-different+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=br https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:26KzMa...
- anpat 9y ago
  I always had this feeling of having heard similar quote to Jeffrey's quote. Now I know exactly where.
make3 9y ago
Facebook is likely not dying though, at least not for a while, let's not get crazy
johnchristopher 9y ago
> Nextcloud is becoming a better and better replacement for Gapps. What ? I just installed Nextcloud to check if that statement is valid and I don't see any slides/excel replacement installed by default or in the store. The interface is a huge improvements over the owncloud one from a thousand years ago though. edit: Ah ! It's the collabora add-on. Description wasn't clear enough. Well, it's crashing at the moment, will try get it fixed. edit2: Ah ! https://www.collaboraoffice.com/collabora-online/ https://www.collaboraoffice.com/collabora-online/ The add-on connects to an instance of collabora. No way to download it, no way to get a pricing. I suppose nextcloud doesn't have google docs/slides/sheets capabilities then.
- tgragnato 9y ago
  > No way to download it, no way to get a pricing. Instructions at https://nextcloud.com/collaboraonline/ https://nextcloud.com/collaboraonline/ .. There's even a docker image for that.
  - johnchristopher 9y ago
    Thanks ! I'll check that page once I am back home. My point somewhat still stands though because https://www.collaboraoffice.com/ https://www.collaboraoffice.com/ is the link given in the description in the app store.

Freak_NL 9y ago

> Now Facebook is finally dying… Doubtful. Facebook is not just facebook.com, it's the whole package of FB Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. People may uninstall the mobile app and limit their Facebook access to their laptops or desktop computers (that's a popular response among my colleagues), but I don't even know anyone who has actually deleted their account — aside from the folk who never had one, like me. I also get the impression that usage of Facebook and related services differs greatly from country to country, and from demographic to demographic. This article¹ from 2014 on WhatsApp usage isn't joking; In countries like mine (the Netherlands) not using Facebook-owned WhatsApp (like me) is rather exceptional. If I had kids they would miss out on basically everything (playdates, birthday parties, changes in schedule for sports/scouts/etc.; not to mention becoming social recluses because all their peers (or their parents when they are younger) are on Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp) if I kept refusing to use Facebook's offerings. Facebook is not going anywhere soon (although I wish it was). 1: https://www.wired.com/2014/02/whatsapp-rules-rest-world/ https://www.wired.com/2014/02/whatsapp-rules-rest-world/

drawkbox 9y ago
Facebook is also Oculus, React, Onavo, Facebook Live and their video platform is trying to compete with Youtube, and they have bought and consumed lots of technology, developers and data from companies that do analytics, deep learning, tracking, location, development tools (even some good ones they EOL'd like Parse) and more. If the Facebook site/app goes the way of AOL/MySpace, which it won't for a long time, they have already prepared for that.
- d33 9y ago
  It would be enough for me if it declined into the confused and nonelastic state Microsoft was in around the times of Vista. That was enough for Android to appear and take over, forcing a paradigm shift.
  - drawkbox 9y ago
    Yeah competition is good. Temporary monopolies can be sometimes good like AT&T building telco/software with Bell Labs and C++ etc, Microsoft with the desktop and getting people online, early ISPs to get broadband started, but they usually end up abusing that position eventually. Some companies get greedy when they get the market leader monopoly power and it can lead to less innovation if they focus on limiting competition rather than beating the open market. Microsoft started to abuse their position eventhough they had won. Then Microsoft got slowed down both from the anti-trust/monopoly DOJ/EU strainer and the subsequent miss of iPhone/Android mobile market. Microsoft got humbled and returned to innovation and is a better company for it today, but has lost power they once held. That speedbump allowed Google (Android/Cloud/Search), Apple (iOS), Amazon (Cloud), and more to rise. Ultimately slowing down Microsoft even a bit re-opened innovation and bettered everyone's quality of life when they had started stiff-arming and blocking competition rather than innovating. There is a lesson to companies that get the market monopoly or top positioning, stay competitive and don't slow down innovation by attacking others, continue to research and develop and innovate. Resorting to limiting others to get ahead in competition makes the companies forget why they are the market leader, win in the open market and innovate to stay the leader. Companies on monopoly/market leader watch: Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and others in tech. Some that have already gone beyond acceptable limitations of stifling innovation include Comcast, Verizon and AT&T and are in need of breaking up again as they turned to favored markets rather than neutral. These companies are not winning with better products but winning with bribes, lobbying and limiting innovation only. As long as companies stay focused on innovations and winning in the fair competitive market, not with limiting others beyond open fair market competition, they will stay ahead and not forget why they are the leader. Market leaders should innovate instead of being the bully.
  - zombieprocesses 9y ago
Feniks 9y ago
So far there hasn't been any ads in WhatsApp. Dutch people are not known for their loyalty or willingness to spend money so I have no idea how Facebook hopes to monetize it. WhatsApp took the market from SMS (a billion dollar cashcow for telcos) in months. Someone else can take on WhatsApp.
machinehermit 9y ago
Facebook is "dieing" as much horny guys acting inappropriate towards women has been "solved". Basically, not at all unless you live in some strange activist bubble that has nothing to do with the real world. All this really did was create a nice buying opportunity yesterday in FB stock.
- galdosdi 9y ago
  You're probably right, though I'm sad about that. For a lot of people FB use seems almost like cigarettes. I mean, not that order of magnitude, but same idea. Doesn't really matter what bad news comes out because it's so habit forming. The bad news has to be truly existential to make a real difference.
- internetman55 9y ago
  It doesn't seem understood here that for many Facebook is for events, sharing some life updates with friends and family, and messenger, not compulsively scrolling your newsfeed to find articles about Trump's plan or something
galdosdi 9y ago
They'll "Alphabetize" and become more of a holding company, but that doesn't mean the core product is immortal. Berkshire Hathaway is strong as a company, but they haven't produced clothing fabric in a very long time.
jgaa 9y ago
The scary part about Facebook dying - and they will at some time - if not now, then later - is who acquires them. Where will all that very personal data about everyone find a new home?

walrus01 9y ago

I think that in aggregate we are not, considering the rapid rate of growth of Facebook in the developing world, where for many low income people, Facebook and FB messenger ARE THE INTERNET. Walled garden achieved. Example: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/the-facebook-loving-farmers-of-myanmar/424812/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/the-f...

ehnto 9y ago
If Facebook does fail and fold, I will be looking toward these communities with great anticipation of what fills the void. Human ingenuity will prevail, and these communities will communicate just as well. My hope is for small tech communities to be inspired for smaller scale, more community friendly technology specific to their problems. At least that's an optimistic view. Of course some other evil corp could fill the gap. Who knows.
csdreamer7 9y ago
I thought there was push back against that. India I know rejected it. https://www.cnet.com/news/why-india-doesnt-want-free-basics/ https://www.cnet.com/news/why-india-doesnt-want-free-basics/ And this came up when I searched for the above link. Seems the walled garden has been partially ended. https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/04/facebooks-internet-org-project-is-now-a-platform/amp/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/04/facebooks-internet-org-pro...

untog 9y ago

Facebook is most certainly not dying. This is a short term blip that it will almost certainly recover from. Even if it ends up being more closely regulated (which I'd support) it could still be a very successful business.

meddlepal 9y ago
We are in for some hot takes over the next 12 months: - stock price up? Facebook is not dying. It's stronger than ever!!! -stock price down? Facebook is toast!
- jfoutz 9y ago
  Stock price or seizure of documents? Not implicated in interfering with a French election? Stronger than ever!!! Called to testify before the House of Lords? Facebook is toast!
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
AOL and MySpace are still around. One possibility is that Facebook could experience a similar asymptotically slow death, gradually losing more DAUs than they gain, but never quite dying.
- hinkley 9y ago
  Everyone who remembers AOL will be dead in another fifty years. So there’s hope.
  - xboxnolifes 9y ago
    Sure hope I'm not.
    - hinkley 9y ago
      When you say you remember AOL, do you mean that it exists or that you remember using it? If the latter, where can we send condolence cards or what is your favorite charity? (I have friends my age that used it, but I think most of us will be dead in 50 years. We could live longer if we took better care of ourselves, but not much)

TeMPOraL 9y ago

With retargeting being rampant, so much talent locked in adtech industry that's still growing strong and keeps innovating new ways to hurt other people, I'm not sure we're better off.

dorgo 9y ago
how does adtech industry hurt people? Btw there are ad blocker for those who don't like ads.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Directly, by wasting people's time and trying to manipulate them into buying a good or service they don't need. Quite often, those goods or services are subpar and a bad fit for the buyer (but a better sale for the seller). For each one of us who knows how to run an ad blocker, there's someone else who will get convinced by the ads and will sign up to a bad deal, possibly leading to a scam or a payday loan. Indirectly, through erosion of privacy and pretty much constructing a global high-tech surveillance apparatus, ready to be taken over by any evil government in the future. Basically, what this talk was about. Indirectly, through criminals who exploit marketers' data, as it inevitably leaks in data breaches. Indirectly, through enabling even more waste of precious resources in a stupid zero-sum game of customer acquisition.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    Indirectly, because ad networks are one of the most powerful malware distribution vectors. (Instead of hacking a website and putting your malware there, you can hack an ad network and put your malware on thousands of websites. Also, I'd expect most ad networks to have only very small budgets for infosec, or none at all.)
- Feniks 9y ago
  Yep some of the brightest minds of our generation are fighting the good fight.

da02 9y ago

What do you mean by, "People are paying for more and more subscriptions"? Nextcloud subscriptions?

Too 9y ago
Netflix instead of YouTube
- Freak_NL 9y ago
  Isn't this more a case of Netflix instead of traditional TV packages on/over cable/fiber/ether?
- csdreamer7 9y ago
  Newspapers too.
- isostatic 9y ago
  How is YouTube red performing?
  - majewsky 9y ago
    No idea, I still cannot subscribe to it in Germany.
    - nasredin 9y ago
      There's your answer then: not very well!!!

hkmurakami 9y ago

What's the marketshare for each of the things you've listed? Do they even have 1%?

yoklov 9y ago
Firefox is certainly more than 1%
- majewsky 9y ago
  Firefox is at about 6% market share: http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share It's higher in some countries, e.g. Germany traditionally has a much stronger Firefox presence. It used to be 40%+, now around 20%.

scardine 9y ago

Perhaps you are remembering the famous quote from Jeffrey Hammerbacher[1] who left Facebook to found Cloudera[2]: “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads" (at a Business Week interview in 2011 [3]). The quote is a parody on another famous quote from the opening lines of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl": > I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, > dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, > Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Hammerbacher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Hammerbacher [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudera [3] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:26KzMa2hCfIJ:https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-04-14/this-tech-bubble-is-different+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=br https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:26KzMa...

anpat 9y ago
I always had this feeling of having heard similar quote to Jeffrey's quote. Now I know exactly where.

make3 9y ago

Facebook is likely not dying though, at least not for a while, let's not get crazy

johnchristopher 9y ago

> Nextcloud is becoming a better and better replacement for Gapps. What ? I just installed Nextcloud to check if that statement is valid and I don't see any slides/excel replacement installed by default or in the store. The interface is a huge improvements over the owncloud one from a thousand years ago though. edit: Ah ! It's the collabora add-on. Description wasn't clear enough. Well, it's crashing at the moment, will try get it fixed. edit2: Ah ! https://www.collaboraoffice.com/collabora-online/ https://www.collaboraoffice.com/collabora-online/ The add-on connects to an instance of collabora. No way to download it, no way to get a pricing. I suppose nextcloud doesn't have google docs/slides/sheets capabilities then.

tgragnato 9y ago
> No way to download it, no way to get a pricing. Instructions at https://nextcloud.com/collaboraonline/ https://nextcloud.com/collaboraonline/ .. There's even a docker image for that.
- johnchristopher 9y ago
  Thanks ! I'll check that page once I am back home. My point somewhat still stands though because https://www.collaboraoffice.com/ https://www.collaboraoffice.com/ is the link given in the description in the app store.