4 ms·
It's easy to under-estimate the value web technologies provide their users, because it's hard to visualise large numbers of people. It's the well known "your br
by syllogism 15y ago
It's easy to under-estimate the value web technologies provide their users, because it's hard to visualise large numbers of people. It's the well known "your brain doesn't naturally multiply" problem.
Let's say you have a technology product that does something pretty trivial, but has non-zero value. Let's say you do something that's worth about 30c per day of utility to each user. If you give this value to 10 million users, you're creating about $3 million of value every day --- or $1 billion of value a year.
That value doesn't seem nearly as real as the equivalent value deployed to a smaller group of people. But that's just because 10 million people is impossible to visualise. The value is still totally real though, despite your lack of intuition for it.
If you believe Facebook delivers little total value, then you must believe its value to individual users is almost totally nil, simply because of the enormous number of people who use the service daily.
Even if you don't like Facebook much, can you really argue that it's delivering _nothing_ to its average user? It's not delivering _any_ value to them at all?
Facebook has 500 million users, and 250 million daily unique logins. If logging on to Facebook delivers even a single cent of value, the total value delivered by each Facebook engineer is already going to be staggering.
1c is an enormous underestimate of what people actually get from the service, but let's run with this. At 1c per login, it's delivering $25 million per day. It has 2000 employees, so each employee is delivering an average of $12.5k per day. I'd actually put the value-per-login at over $1, which would take the average contribution to over $1 million per day.
People would be wise to think carefully before questioning the way markets are allocating capital and drawing in talent. There are certainly cases where the capital allocation is inefficient, but there are also cases where your mental heuristics give you blind-spots.
- cma 15y agoI am not comparing Facebook to meth, but I just want to point out that the same form of argument you just made would also apply to meth.
- syllogism 15y agoFor an addict, each meth use is delivering an enormous amount of negative value. There's also the terrible negative value the addict may create for other people. The same argument about multiplication would suggest that your intuition under-estimates the total negative effects of meth on the world.
- cma 15y agoI was referring to the markets part.
- astrofinch 15y agoI'd guess that for most, Facebook delivers negative value. Using Facebook and Twitter represent things we're programmed to do without enjoying.
- wnight 15y agoThe comparison with meth is closer than you think. As the other comment says many people Facebook more than they enjoy doing so. If you really charged them for it, to establish this value, they've vanish in a second. Not that I'm saying it's inherently un-enjoyable, but FB develops the best system for FB, not for its users. Not just that its all about ad delivery, but FB is famous for time wasting games that keep you coming back even when you aren't having any fun, using guilt trips. The value FB is creating is for advertisers, and only secondarily for the users being advertised to. And it's not like FB created the social-networking value from nothing. They consolidated a lot on one page. Enabling chat and homepage in one package, etc, has value, but that's essentially it. The value of FB is email + chat + games + photos + single-package convenience - inconvenience. The convenience of service consolidation is balanced by the inconvenience of FB being a monopoly (if something goes wrong you can always get another email provider, try getting another FB provider), the inconvenience of them sharing your personal info with developers, the lack of differentiation between family, friends, and acquaintances, etc.
- Entaroadun 15y agoPersonally, what I'd like to discuss is if there is any moral value that Facebook provides. Does Facebook actually benefit society? (Maybe more precisely we can ask whether Facebook fulfills an aspect of Maslow's hierarchy of needs). I just keep hearing the word 'value' used over and over here and it frustrates me that it is so often only associated with 'business value' rather than something more morally significant.
- syllogism 15y agoFB is important in letting me keep a full but just-in-time social calendar. I don't want to plan going out a weeknight far in advance, or even necessarily a big night on a weekend. But often I do want to go out. Facebook makes it easier to organise these things at a moment's notice. This is much better than planning ahead, because if you plan ahead you have to keep appointments even if you don't feel like it on the day. So socialising a lot that way gets to be a bit tiring. Doing things on the spur of the moment is better. For example, the other night a friend hosted a vegan potluck for about 10 people with about four hours notice. That would've been hard to do without Facebook.