7 ms·

I noticed Facebook's feed is now only 4 posts from friends between sponsored posts. To me this looks like they are starting to push the boundary of advertisemen

I noticed Facebook's feed is now only 4 posts from friends between sponsored posts. To me this looks like they are starting to push the boundary of advertisement beyond what makes sense for the UI. I didn't think they were desperate for revenue but that's kinda what it looks like. They feel like AOL in 1998.

TuringNYC 8y ago
I'm 39, so out of touch with many people and especially out of touch with younger generations. I recently spoke to a college counselor who has tremendous interaction with students across all mediums. He is pretty balanced in his views. He swears, Facebook interactions are an empty shell of what it was in 2008 and that it is nearly completely irrelevant for the current and incoming generation of students (not including Instagram and WhatsApp, which are FB properties, and very much hot.) He bases this on interactions he has with almost a thousand+ students. For me, this is difficult to fathom, Facebook to me is like General Electric, a bastion of day to day life.
- varenc 8y ago
  I’d second that observations just based on how my 8 younger siblings use it. They’re 13-28 and all barely touch Facebook, though some are very active on Instagram. To them, me using Facebook is what old people like me do.
- HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
  I know the feeling, even though I haven't been on Facebook in years. My 18 year-old met his current girlfriend because she saw him in a parking lot and asked what his Snapchat name was. I don't think he even bothers with FB any more. The interesting thing to me was that this girl simply expected that he would be on Snapchat. I guess that's where everyone is these days.
  - cm2187 8y ago
    Car parks, quality dating grounds!
    - metildaa 8y ago
      For many Americans, large parking lots/being carbound are facts of life. Half the land area in non-residential zoned properties is required to be parking in many municipalities, which helps to make these areas unfriendly to commute in for any mode, pushing buildings significantly further apart for little benefit. Cars have been the least worst way to get around these hostile environments for a long time, though I think eBikes are starting to become more popular as they can cut around the horrifyingly bad traffic in many of these places, while not requiring one to join the lycra crowd.
      - mcv 8y ago
        Why would you need to join the lycra crowd without an eBike? I hope they take off, though. Everything I hear about US traffic sounds hopelessly hostile.
        idontpost 8y ago
        > Why would you need to join the lycra crowd without an eBike? Because you get very sweaty trying to ride a bike any distance in 90 degree weather.
    - detritus 8y ago
      What a strange, cynical comment. Car parks are a mere part of greater reality - what sense of quality does it imbue that is more or less worthy than any other where perchancing on another is concerned?
    - itronitron 8y ago
      that probably depends a lot on the time of day
  - 8ytecoder 8y ago
    Snapchat is out of fashion already. It's Tik-tok/Musically that's the current fad (or trendy) social media app.
    - tprnz 8y ago
      Tiktok bought their way to their current position. I bet most of the "best tiktoks" accounts on Facebook/Twitter are owned by themselves. In a matter of months they will die off naturally.
      - ndnxhs 8y ago
        It does seem very artificial. A very boring/obnoxious app that went from nothing to being pushed at me from everywhere.
    - dabockster 8y ago
      Tik Tok is Chinese, though. Is there a US version out?
      - justapassenger 8y ago
        Yes. Facebook just launched one :)
  - vict00ms 8y ago
    I'm in my early-40s and when I first met my wife in college, we exchanged AIM handles :)
- gbear605 8y ago
  For another anecdote: I’m a college student, and essentially the only reason that anyone I know uses Facebook is for groups that date to a while ago, groups set up by older people, and Messenger.
  - alistairSH 8y ago
    I can confirm this is true with my son (24), his GF, and most of their peers. Facebook interaction is limited to occasional sharing of photos with older relatives, usually via Instagram. This is mostly true of my younger employees, who are a similar age as my son.
    - eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
      Definitely makes me wonder if Instagram got rid of the crosspost-to-facebook feature, how much more dead would Facebook appear? Most of the people around my age group (20-30s) are largely on Instagram and then some cross-post to Facebook for the "old people."
- ss2003 8y ago
  General Electric is not doing so well either.
  - metildaa 8y ago
    GE is "reinventing" just like IBM. They will probably be dying 10 years from now...
    - zaidf 8y ago
      The same way people have been predicting the death of IBM, Microsoft etc. for past couple decades?
      - metildaa 8y ago
        Yep, same tangent/thinking. Reality is IBM & Microsoft have enough contracts and political capital to ensure their continued existence.
        drdrey 8y ago
        Microsoft still exists as a business, but what about mindshare? It's not event part of FANG
        zaidf 8y ago
        They don't merely exist as a business. They have a higher market cap than 4/4 FANG companies.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  GE stock has plummeted by nearly 80% in the last two years.
- gnud 8y ago
  I'm only a few years younger than you, and I also use Facebook a lot. But I only use groups, events and messenger. It's impressive how bad their UI is for my use, though. It seems like Facebook is trying to be useless for important things, like community groups where you actually have to coordinate things, or events you actually want to show up to. Instead they're working really hard to always shove uninteresting algorithmic suggestions in your face at every turn.
- keyle 8y ago
  I'm not young and Facebook is heavily used in hobbies with various groups chiming and thriving. Messenger is also heavily used. If anything it's "what my friends had for dinner" that's dying and that's good thing.
- robohoe 8y ago
  So are you saying that it's going the way of MySpace?
  - loosescrews 8y ago
    A big difference is that Facebook has gained a large number of older users. For that reason, Facebook is going to have a much slower decline.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
  I'm in my mid-30s and I agree based on what I've seen. Facebook is a ghost town now. And a lot of people I know that have both Instagram and FB are only using Instagram now. I think it's clear that people are more careful about what and who they share with, which is why the ephemeral systems (snapchat, instagram stories) are gaining in popularity. Apple has improved the photo sharing stuff in iCloud lately too, so I'm seeing more and more people I know close using the (private) photo sharing system. A lot of people don't want their daily musings to be on the "permanent record," regardless of age group, and Facebook is almost a victim of its own success -- it's too good at connecting people by loose ties and encouraging this problem. And then it's not long before you have a huge list of Facebook "friends" which include actual friends, family, extended family, bosses, ex-bosses, co-workers, etc. Now, imagine putting all of those groups of people at your dinner table and try to think of topics you'd be open to discussing among all of those disparate groups.
  - rolleiflex 8y ago
    Yeah - ephemerality is going to be the word of the century. We forget, and since this is such a natural thing to us, we did not immediately realise how machines that cannot forget was very much problematic. We get that now. There are a bunch of people trying to make apps that forget over time, eventually, one of them will figure out a way to mass market. Heck, I spent last Saturday at the top of HN with one of those that I made, Aether. [0] Prior HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370208 [0] https://getaether.net https://getaether.net
  - nothis 8y ago
    >And then it's not long before you have a huge list of Facebook "friends" which include actual friends, family, extended family, bosses, ex-bosses, co-workers, etc. Now, imagine putting all of those groups of people at your dinner table and try to think of topics you'd be open to discussing among all of those disparate groups. This is what it comes down to, isn't it? That's all of facebook's problems. The success of Instagram and WhatsApp comes from them being less connected, that's their core feature. I don't even mind facebook owning them. I like that the big trend is moving away from documenting every minute of your life in an online repository. Instagram is its own, surreal thing and WhatsApp is basically texting.
- ams6110 8y ago
  > I'm 39 ... Facebook to me is like General Electric, a bastion of day to day life I'm in my early 50s. None of social media made any sense to me, and I never engaged in any of it. Email seemed (and still seems) to be perfectly adequate for keeping in touch with friends and family.
  - unityByFreedom 8y ago
    Mid 30s here. For me, fb is an easy way to connect with new people. Particularly useful when traveling or in a new school. You search by name, confirm the photo is of the person you're looking for, and bam, they're in your address book. The rest of it - constant updates about mundane things - in other words, the whole news feed - can be ignored.
- ajcodez 8y ago
  I'm 25, very few of my contemporaries share on Facebook anymore. It's a shadow of three years ago. My mom and her brother will post pretty often. Self promoters fill up my feed. I can infinite scroll for a while without seeing anything from friends I spend time with offline. Facebook Messenger, Facebook Events, Instagram are still ubiquitous.
aviv 8y ago
Facebook posts from actual people are so mundane, self-serving and egoistical that I actually enjoy the ads more.
- anonymous5133 8y ago
  Completely agree. Most of my FB posts seem to focus on "look how rich I am to afford these shoes, this expensive vacation or these nice clothes/diner" etc. Some of these people on my feed also seem to have some sort of narcissistic mental illness...like craving for attention without end. Then you have the people that post nothing but political ramblings. The amount of people sharing genuine content has plummeted and the overall platform just seems to be fake overall. I've stopped posting to the platform and only look at the new feed a little. I mostly use the site for the groups function.
- nemo44x 8y ago
  I had to laugh at how true this is. Before I stopped using it I found myself scrolling past everything but the ads which at least caught my eye.
paulie_a 8y ago
It's typically 1/3 of your feed in my experience. It depends on time of day I've noticed. I usually use Facebook either in the morning before I get up and there are less ads. Or late at night when winding down. But they really have dark patterns to disguise an ad. It's disgusting, a friend liked some random post 6 months ago and everything that company posted since is popping up. They make it appear as if that friend is endorsing everything from that company. Aol is probably being too complimentary.
spamizbad 8y ago
I feel like Facebook is burning the furniture to heat the house at this point.
ageitgey 8y ago
I've also noticed that the rate of advertising on Instagram is through the roof too (at least on my feed). It seems like 1 in 3 posts is now an ad and there even random ads when looking through recent Instagram Stories. It makes the whole product feel super cheap and needy.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
  Instagram Stories ads are not as profitable for FB as News Feed ads, so the frequency is likely to increase.
- brown9-2 8y ago
  I don’t think it is a coincidence that the founders recently left.
- ajcodez 8y ago
  I actually enjoy the Instagram ads in my feed. It's usually quirky Kickstarter products like iPhone camera swivels, or magnets that keep your shirt tucked in, or a new brand of chef knives. Pretty fun seeing all the gadgets and ideas.
anonymous5133 8y ago
The problem for Facebook is the stock price has been bid up to unrealistic levels and investors have unrealistic expectations. End result...FB tries to meet those expectations by basically flooding the platform with ads. Meanwhile the management team is basically a major flop. They view FB as having the only source of revenue being from ads. That's why they focus so much on increasing DAU. The real value in facebook is that FB has a captive audience which would most likely consume related related products created by facebook. The fact that there is no facebook e-mail service, banking services, dating service or ebay oriented marketplace (the current facebook marketplace is effectively a disaster which is loaded with scammers) basically shows that FB management has failed to utilize the platform to create value for shareholders. Meanwhile, the over reliance and over pushing of advertising is discouraging people from using the platform.
- annadane 8y ago
  And the fact they - possibly as a result - don't really put much stock (no pun intended) in privacy. Why are my comments on posts, a notification to other people, to list just one example?
  - wyclif 8y ago
    Because it increases engagement, which makes you spend more time on Facebook, which exposes you to more ads.
    - annadane 8y ago
      Well obviously. Still a shitty way to run a company.
- justapassenger 8y ago
  Start of this year, PE ratio for Facebook was ~30 (https://ycharts.com/companies/FB/pe_ratio https://ycharts.com/companies/FB/pe_ratio). That’s not that unrealistic for a tech company. Facebook used to have email - they retired it few years ago. Banking services - not there, but you can send money with messenger. Dating - that literally just launched Marketplace - it’s still growing
reaperducer 8y ago
Huh, you're right. I just checked my Facebook feed, and there's an ad every four posts. But like AOL, it feels like more.
RodericDay 8y ago
they're doing lots of desperate things I almost don't use it cept for events so I notice When you add a new friend, they immediately start a conversation (that's one click) They also periodically send a notification about events near you (that's another click) Instagram apparently also keeps nudging my girlfriend to check back on facebook (don't use it, don't know)
mcv 8y ago
I almost never check my feed on Facebook. I get notifications for posts from the few people there I really care about (close family plus one acquaintance who posts really interesting stuff). That seems to me like the best way to use Facebook.
kamaal 8y ago
Most of the action has moved to WhatsApp and Instagram. Though engagement fatigue can be seen there too. At the end every service will drop to its utility. I remember sitting in front of my Desktop and searching pointless stuff in Google for hours in the 2000s, these days I do it only when I actually do need to search something. Even there I search for things to buy on Amazon or Flipkart. People I search on LinkedIn or Facebook.
unwabuisi 8y ago
I currently handle digital advertising at a company that is heavily reliant on Facebook Ads. I've worked with this company nearly 3 years, and we got a call from the Facebook Ads team for the first time ever, around September of this year. They called under the pretense of 'making sure we were utilizing the full potential of their ads manager' but after about 2 or 3 phone calls with them, my manager and I caught on to their angle. Their suggestions over these phone calls were for us to test out all of these new features and 'creatives' they were adding to the Ads platform. Testing these new features and methods costs money, and what we had spent years tweaking and perfecting was actually working just fine. Essentially they were targeting us because we had around $XX,XXX in annual ad spend, which probably put us in some Small - Medium business category where they felt they could extract more ad dollars from us. It definitely smells like they are desperate for revenue and I can only imagine what they're Ads (read: Sales) teams are pushing to marketers at Enterprise levels with millions in ad spend on FB.

TuringNYC 8y ago

I'm 39, so out of touch with many people and especially out of touch with younger generations. I recently spoke to a college counselor who has tremendous interaction with students across all mediums. He is pretty balanced in his views. He swears, Facebook interactions are an empty shell of what it was in 2008 and that it is nearly completely irrelevant for the current and incoming generation of students (not including Instagram and WhatsApp, which are FB properties, and very much hot.) He bases this on interactions he has with almost a thousand+ students. For me, this is difficult to fathom, Facebook to me is like General Electric, a bastion of day to day life.

varenc 8y ago
I’d second that observations just based on how my 8 younger siblings use it. They’re 13-28 and all barely touch Facebook, though some are very active on Instagram. To them, me using Facebook is what old people like me do.
HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
I know the feeling, even though I haven't been on Facebook in years. My 18 year-old met his current girlfriend because she saw him in a parking lot and asked what his Snapchat name was. I don't think he even bothers with FB any more. The interesting thing to me was that this girl simply expected that he would be on Snapchat. I guess that's where everyone is these days.
- cm2187 8y ago
  Car parks, quality dating grounds!
  - metildaa 8y ago
    For many Americans, large parking lots/being carbound are facts of life. Half the land area in non-residential zoned properties is required to be parking in many municipalities, which helps to make these areas unfriendly to commute in for any mode, pushing buildings significantly further apart for little benefit. Cars have been the least worst way to get around these hostile environments for a long time, though I think eBikes are starting to become more popular as they can cut around the horrifyingly bad traffic in many of these places, while not requiring one to join the lycra crowd.
    - mcv 8y ago
      Why would you need to join the lycra crowd without an eBike? I hope they take off, though. Everything I hear about US traffic sounds hopelessly hostile.
      - idontpost 8y ago
        > Why would you need to join the lycra crowd without an eBike? Because you get very sweaty trying to ride a bike any distance in 90 degree weather.
  - detritus 8y ago
    What a strange, cynical comment. Car parks are a mere part of greater reality - what sense of quality does it imbue that is more or less worthy than any other where perchancing on another is concerned?
  - itronitron 8y ago
    that probably depends a lot on the time of day
- 8ytecoder 8y ago
  Snapchat is out of fashion already. It's Tik-tok/Musically that's the current fad (or trendy) social media app.
  - tprnz 8y ago
    Tiktok bought their way to their current position. I bet most of the "best tiktoks" accounts on Facebook/Twitter are owned by themselves. In a matter of months they will die off naturally.
    - ndnxhs 8y ago
      It does seem very artificial. A very boring/obnoxious app that went from nothing to being pushed at me from everywhere.
  - dabockster 8y ago
    Tik Tok is Chinese, though. Is there a US version out?
    - justapassenger 8y ago
      Yes. Facebook just launched one :)
- vict00ms 8y ago
  I'm in my early-40s and when I first met my wife in college, we exchanged AIM handles :)
gbear605 8y ago
For another anecdote: I’m a college student, and essentially the only reason that anyone I know uses Facebook is for groups that date to a while ago, groups set up by older people, and Messenger.
- alistairSH 8y ago
  I can confirm this is true with my son (24), his GF, and most of their peers. Facebook interaction is limited to occasional sharing of photos with older relatives, usually via Instagram. This is mostly true of my younger employees, who are a similar age as my son.
  - eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
    Definitely makes me wonder if Instagram got rid of the crosspost-to-facebook feature, how much more dead would Facebook appear? Most of the people around my age group (20-30s) are largely on Instagram and then some cross-post to Facebook for the "old people."
ss2003 8y ago
General Electric is not doing so well either.
- metildaa 8y ago
  GE is "reinventing" just like IBM. They will probably be dying 10 years from now...
  - zaidf 8y ago
    The same way people have been predicting the death of IBM, Microsoft etc. for past couple decades?
    - metildaa 8y ago
      Yep, same tangent/thinking. Reality is IBM & Microsoft have enough contracts and political capital to ensure their continued existence.
      - drdrey 8y ago
        Microsoft still exists as a business, but what about mindshare? It's not event part of FANG
        zaidf 8y ago
        They don't merely exist as a business. They have a higher market cap than 4/4 FANG companies.
EpicEng 8y ago
GE stock has plummeted by nearly 80% in the last two years.
gnud 8y ago
I'm only a few years younger than you, and I also use Facebook a lot. But I only use groups, events and messenger. It's impressive how bad their UI is for my use, though. It seems like Facebook is trying to be useless for important things, like community groups where you actually have to coordinate things, or events you actually want to show up to. Instead they're working really hard to always shove uninteresting algorithmic suggestions in your face at every turn.
keyle 8y ago
I'm not young and Facebook is heavily used in hobbies with various groups chiming and thriving. Messenger is also heavily used. If anything it's "what my friends had for dinner" that's dying and that's good thing.
robohoe 8y ago
So are you saying that it's going the way of MySpace?
- loosescrews 8y ago
  A big difference is that Facebook has gained a large number of older users. For that reason, Facebook is going to have a much slower decline.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
I'm in my mid-30s and I agree based on what I've seen. Facebook is a ghost town now. And a lot of people I know that have both Instagram and FB are only using Instagram now. I think it's clear that people are more careful about what and who they share with, which is why the ephemeral systems (snapchat, instagram stories) are gaining in popularity. Apple has improved the photo sharing stuff in iCloud lately too, so I'm seeing more and more people I know close using the (private) photo sharing system. A lot of people don't want their daily musings to be on the "permanent record," regardless of age group, and Facebook is almost a victim of its own success -- it's too good at connecting people by loose ties and encouraging this problem. And then it's not long before you have a huge list of Facebook "friends" which include actual friends, family, extended family, bosses, ex-bosses, co-workers, etc. Now, imagine putting all of those groups of people at your dinner table and try to think of topics you'd be open to discussing among all of those disparate groups.
- rolleiflex 8y ago
  Yeah - ephemerality is going to be the word of the century. We forget, and since this is such a natural thing to us, we did not immediately realise how machines that cannot forget was very much problematic. We get that now. There are a bunch of people trying to make apps that forget over time, eventually, one of them will figure out a way to mass market. Heck, I spent last Saturday at the top of HN with one of those that I made, Aether. [0] Prior HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370208 [0] https://getaether.net https://getaether.net
- nothis 8y ago
  >And then it's not long before you have a huge list of Facebook "friends" which include actual friends, family, extended family, bosses, ex-bosses, co-workers, etc. Now, imagine putting all of those groups of people at your dinner table and try to think of topics you'd be open to discussing among all of those disparate groups. This is what it comes down to, isn't it? That's all of facebook's problems. The success of Instagram and WhatsApp comes from them being less connected, that's their core feature. I don't even mind facebook owning them. I like that the big trend is moving away from documenting every minute of your life in an online repository. Instagram is its own, surreal thing and WhatsApp is basically texting.
ams6110 8y ago
> I'm 39 ... Facebook to me is like General Electric, a bastion of day to day life I'm in my early 50s. None of social media made any sense to me, and I never engaged in any of it. Email seemed (and still seems) to be perfectly adequate for keeping in touch with friends and family.
- unityByFreedom 8y ago
  Mid 30s here. For me, fb is an easy way to connect with new people. Particularly useful when traveling or in a new school. You search by name, confirm the photo is of the person you're looking for, and bam, they're in your address book. The rest of it - constant updates about mundane things - in other words, the whole news feed - can be ignored.
ajcodez 8y ago
I'm 25, very few of my contemporaries share on Facebook anymore. It's a shadow of three years ago. My mom and her brother will post pretty often. Self promoters fill up my feed. I can infinite scroll for a while without seeing anything from friends I spend time with offline. Facebook Messenger, Facebook Events, Instagram are still ubiquitous.

aviv 8y ago

Facebook posts from actual people are so mundane, self-serving and egoistical that I actually enjoy the ads more.

anonymous5133 8y ago
Completely agree. Most of my FB posts seem to focus on "look how rich I am to afford these shoes, this expensive vacation or these nice clothes/diner" etc. Some of these people on my feed also seem to have some sort of narcissistic mental illness...like craving for attention without end. Then you have the people that post nothing but political ramblings. The amount of people sharing genuine content has plummeted and the overall platform just seems to be fake overall. I've stopped posting to the platform and only look at the new feed a little. I mostly use the site for the groups function.
nemo44x 8y ago
I had to laugh at how true this is. Before I stopped using it I found myself scrolling past everything but the ads which at least caught my eye.

paulie_a 8y ago

It's typically 1/3 of your feed in my experience. It depends on time of day I've noticed. I usually use Facebook either in the morning before I get up and there are less ads. Or late at night when winding down. But they really have dark patterns to disguise an ad. It's disgusting, a friend liked some random post 6 months ago and everything that company posted since is popping up. They make it appear as if that friend is endorsing everything from that company. Aol is probably being too complimentary.

spamizbad 8y ago

I feel like Facebook is burning the furniture to heat the house at this point.

ageitgey 8y ago

I've also noticed that the rate of advertising on Instagram is through the roof too (at least on my feed). It seems like 1 in 3 posts is now an ad and there even random ads when looking through recent Instagram Stories. It makes the whole product feel super cheap and needy.

eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
Instagram Stories ads are not as profitable for FB as News Feed ads, so the frequency is likely to increase.
brown9-2 8y ago
I don’t think it is a coincidence that the founders recently left.
ajcodez 8y ago
I actually enjoy the Instagram ads in my feed. It's usually quirky Kickstarter products like iPhone camera swivels, or magnets that keep your shirt tucked in, or a new brand of chef knives. Pretty fun seeing all the gadgets and ideas.

anonymous5133 8y ago

The problem for Facebook is the stock price has been bid up to unrealistic levels and investors have unrealistic expectations. End result...FB tries to meet those expectations by basically flooding the platform with ads. Meanwhile the management team is basically a major flop. They view FB as having the only source of revenue being from ads. That's why they focus so much on increasing DAU. The real value in facebook is that FB has a captive audience which would most likely consume related related products created by facebook. The fact that there is no facebook e-mail service, banking services, dating service or ebay oriented marketplace (the current facebook marketplace is effectively a disaster which is loaded with scammers) basically shows that FB management has failed to utilize the platform to create value for shareholders. Meanwhile, the over reliance and over pushing of advertising is discouraging people from using the platform.

annadane 8y ago
And the fact they - possibly as a result - don't really put much stock (no pun intended) in privacy. Why are my comments on posts, a notification to other people, to list just one example?
- wyclif 8y ago
  Because it increases engagement, which makes you spend more time on Facebook, which exposes you to more ads.
  - annadane 8y ago
    Well obviously. Still a shitty way to run a company.
justapassenger 8y ago
Start of this year, PE ratio for Facebook was ~30 (https://ycharts.com/companies/FB/pe_ratio https://ycharts.com/companies/FB/pe_ratio). That’s not that unrealistic for a tech company. Facebook used to have email - they retired it few years ago. Banking services - not there, but you can send money with messenger. Dating - that literally just launched Marketplace - it’s still growing

reaperducer 8y ago

Huh, you're right. I just checked my Facebook feed, and there's an ad every four posts. But like AOL, it feels like more.

RodericDay 8y ago

they're doing lots of desperate things I almost don't use it cept for events so I notice When you add a new friend, they immediately start a conversation (that's one click) They also periodically send a notification about events near you (that's another click) Instagram apparently also keeps nudging my girlfriend to check back on facebook (don't use it, don't know)

mcv 8y ago

I almost never check my feed on Facebook. I get notifications for posts from the few people there I really care about (close family plus one acquaintance who posts really interesting stuff). That seems to me like the best way to use Facebook.

kamaal 8y ago

Most of the action has moved to WhatsApp and Instagram. Though engagement fatigue can be seen there too. At the end every service will drop to its utility. I remember sitting in front of my Desktop and searching pointless stuff in Google for hours in the 2000s, these days I do it only when I actually do need to search something. Even there I search for things to buy on Amazon or Flipkart. People I search on LinkedIn or Facebook.

unwabuisi 8y ago

I currently handle digital advertising at a company that is heavily reliant on Facebook Ads. I've worked with this company nearly 3 years, and we got a call from the Facebook Ads team for the first time ever, around September of this year. They called under the pretense of 'making sure we were utilizing the full potential of their ads manager' but after about 2 or 3 phone calls with them, my manager and I caught on to their angle. Their suggestions over these phone calls were for us to test out all of these new features and 'creatives' they were adding to the Ads platform. Testing these new features and methods costs money, and what we had spent years tweaking and perfecting was actually working just fine. Essentially they were targeting us because we had around $XX,XXX in annual ad spend, which probably put us in some Small - Medium business category where they felt they could extract more ad dollars from us. It definitely smells like they are desperate for revenue and I can only imagine what they're Ads (read: Sales) teams are pushing to marketers at Enterprise levels with millions in ad spend on FB.