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My sense is that Facebook is really well made, and isn't going anywhere (i.e., Facebook is to social networking what Google is to search). I could see LinkedIn

My sense is that Facebook is really well made, and isn't going anywhere (i.e., Facebook is to social networking what Google is to search). I could see LinkedIn getting destroyed, though. They fill a very real need, but don't seem to do it very well. This is all very qualitative, but I never feel like I have a pleasant experience on LinkedIn.

joe_the_user 15y ago
Facebook is absolutely fabulously done (complaints about it concern privacy and abuse potential but the interface is top-notch). The thing about Facebook though, is A) The interface requires lots of care and feeding to stay clean and appealing - Facebook has stayed nice through it small number of very talented engineers. B) Facebook's economics and its supply of topnotch talent has been leverage from its constant growth and its quality as the thing that's happening. If it instead is faced with a slow decrease in users and a feeling that it's "jumped the shark(tm)", it will have a lot of trouble keeping its economics, its talent and thus the quality of the interface. So I imagine that FB could fall apart in some medium-scale time frame. Oddly enough, I think the end of Facebook wouldn't be good news for those plots "alternatives" to it. I actually hope Facebook IPOs soon, might postpone some problems...
- delackner 15y ago
  Are we talking about the same service? The User experience is horrible. I am not just talking from a hacker perspective, as most of the people I know that complain about facebook are very NON technical people. They just complain about the same things that I also hate: That facebook makes it impossible ( by design ) to hide the endless stream of inane auto-generated SPAM that fills your news stream. The worst is that this spam is directly from facebook. My news stream is now 90% "X is now friends with 10 new people", "Y and 15 other friends changed their profile pic", "That book you [Liked] has a fun factoid to blather about". The iPhone app is worse. You can't even see your own lists at this point, and clicking on youtube links doesn't just play the video, it opens an embedded browser that gleefully suggests that you try adding youtube to your Home screen. The iPad optimized site is so useless for reading anything a friend links to that I don't even bother clicking anymore, I just wait until I am at a PC. The message viewer makes it impossible to quickly mark as-read or delete the vast numbers of messages that I never open because the popup notification on my phone contained enough information to never need to open the full message. The reason that facebook is still going strong is not good user interface or experience, it is that it is incredibly sticky. They managed to become the new email for a lot of people, and that utility is enough to force a lot of people to grind their teeth and ignore the horrible parts.
  - JeffL 15y ago
    I suspect the streams are optimized for people whose "friends" are actually their friends. My friends list contains 30 of my real friends that I care about, so these notifications you mention aren't actually Spam to me. The problem is that a lot of people have turned number of friends into a high score, but when your friends list is 500 people you barely know, it seems like you are basically using Facebook for the wrong thing.
    - delackner 15y ago
      Let's see, 349 friends today. I personally know every single one of them. Do you really care when one of your friends adds someone they met last night at a bar? Or when they change their profile pic, again?
      - JeffL 15y ago
        I would say it's a combination of caring a little bit and having those events be so rare with only 30 friends that the signal to noise ratio is still really high.
  - sucrenoir 15y ago
    25 millions ipads sold and still no way to get a decent user experience on the iPad. And i have tried a lot of apps...
    - delackner 15y ago
      There is no facebook ipad app. Just a poorly implemented mobile site. It would be perfectly easy for them to have done it right.
  - paganel 15y ago
    > Y and 15 other friends changed their profile pic > X is now friends with 10 new people It might be just me, but isn't this the main use of FB, i.e. stalking? Of course I want to know when my friends have changed their profile pictures, how else would I assess their happiness and fulfillment in life if not by looking at their latest photos?
kenjackson 15y ago
Search and social networking are very different in their ability to persist, IMO. While switching costs are low with search, the ability to offer a better product is difficult. Momentum gives you little advantage in search. For example, Bing is not marginally better positioned with 14% market share vs when it had 9%. Social networks are almost the polar opposite. It's hard to get any traction at all in social because switching costs are high. But if Facebook sees a competitor get 5% of its user base and then a few months later have 10% they should be scared to death. It probably means Facebook is already dead and just don't know it yet.

joe_the_user 15y ago

Facebook is absolutely fabulously done (complaints about it concern privacy and abuse potential but the interface is top-notch). The thing about Facebook though, is A) The interface requires lots of care and feeding to stay clean and appealing - Facebook has stayed nice through it small number of very talented engineers. B) Facebook's economics and its supply of topnotch talent has been leverage from its constant growth and its quality as the thing that's happening. If it instead is faced with a slow decrease in users and a feeling that it's "jumped the shark(tm)", it will have a lot of trouble keeping its economics, its talent and thus the quality of the interface. So I imagine that FB could fall apart in some medium-scale time frame. Oddly enough, I think the end of Facebook wouldn't be good news for those plots "alternatives" to it. I actually hope Facebook IPOs soon, might postpone some problems...

delackner 15y ago
Are we talking about the same service? The User experience is horrible. I am not just talking from a hacker perspective, as most of the people I know that complain about facebook are very NON technical people. They just complain about the same things that I also hate: That facebook makes it impossible ( by design ) to hide the endless stream of inane auto-generated SPAM that fills your news stream. The worst is that this spam is directly from facebook. My news stream is now 90% "X is now friends with 10 new people", "Y and 15 other friends changed their profile pic", "That book you [Liked] has a fun factoid to blather about". The iPhone app is worse. You can't even see your own lists at this point, and clicking on youtube links doesn't just play the video, it opens an embedded browser that gleefully suggests that you try adding youtube to your Home screen. The iPad optimized site is so useless for reading anything a friend links to that I don't even bother clicking anymore, I just wait until I am at a PC. The message viewer makes it impossible to quickly mark as-read or delete the vast numbers of messages that I never open because the popup notification on my phone contained enough information to never need to open the full message. The reason that facebook is still going strong is not good user interface or experience, it is that it is incredibly sticky. They managed to become the new email for a lot of people, and that utility is enough to force a lot of people to grind their teeth and ignore the horrible parts.
- JeffL 15y ago
  I suspect the streams are optimized for people whose "friends" are actually their friends. My friends list contains 30 of my real friends that I care about, so these notifications you mention aren't actually Spam to me. The problem is that a lot of people have turned number of friends into a high score, but when your friends list is 500 people you barely know, it seems like you are basically using Facebook for the wrong thing.
  - delackner 15y ago
    Let's see, 349 friends today. I personally know every single one of them. Do you really care when one of your friends adds someone they met last night at a bar? Or when they change their profile pic, again?
    - JeffL 15y ago
      I would say it's a combination of caring a little bit and having those events be so rare with only 30 friends that the signal to noise ratio is still really high.
- sucrenoir 15y ago
  25 millions ipads sold and still no way to get a decent user experience on the iPad. And i have tried a lot of apps...
  - delackner 15y ago
    There is no facebook ipad app. Just a poorly implemented mobile site. It would be perfectly easy for them to have done it right.
- paganel 15y ago
  > Y and 15 other friends changed their profile pic > X is now friends with 10 new people It might be just me, but isn't this the main use of FB, i.e. stalking? Of course I want to know when my friends have changed their profile pictures, how else would I assess their happiness and fulfillment in life if not by looking at their latest photos?

kenjackson 15y ago

Search and social networking are very different in their ability to persist, IMO. While switching costs are low with search, the ability to offer a better product is difficult. Momentum gives you little advantage in search. For example, Bing is not marginally better positioned with 14% market share vs when it had 9%. Social networks are almost the polar opposite. It's hard to get any traction at all in social because switching costs are high. But if Facebook sees a competitor get 5% of its user base and then a few months later have 10% they should be scared to death. It probably means Facebook is already dead and just don't know it yet.