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When I read about Facebook's issues, I sometimes have the urge so start giving armchair advice about how they should fix their problem this or that way. But ha
by slver 5y ago
When I read about Facebook's issues, I sometimes have the urge so start giving armchair advice about how they should fix their problem this or that way.
But having a clue about their scale, their business model, and the logistical and technical complexity of it... frankly there's no fixing this cesspool.
Use it or leave it.
My guess is that Facebook will be eventually replaced by a company with a completely different business model. I hope that business model focuses on (low) monthly fee, no ads, no tracking, just provide the service people need to connect with each other. Like a utility. Like your phone, or postal service.
But also it's a bit of a wishful thinking.
- hliyan 5y agoNo-ad services are no longer possible. The very fact that you are willing to pay for a service signals advertisers that you have purchasing power. The more you pay to keep ads out, the more advertisers will pay to put them back in. This will only get worse until some sort of socioeconomic paradigm shift takes place.
- slver 5y agoAds are not that profitable per user. So as companies like Apple show, no-ad services are working great, and have great ROI.
- thatfunkymunki 5y agoapple has rather annoying ads in their app store though, so maybe not as successful as you think.
- lucasmullens 5y agoNo longer possible? There's tons and tons of websites and apps that have paid subscriptions, most of which don't have ads after subscribing. If I'm willing to pay $50/mo to remove ads from Facebook, that just says what the ads are worth to me, not to the advertiser. Advertisers won't pay any price to show me an ad for Pepsi.
- hliyan 5y agoI hope to god you're right. But, a counterpoint from an adjacent post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27620036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27620036
- macintux 5y agoUnfortunately leaving it individually doesn’t help much: the societal damage is huge.
- mikepurvis 5y agoWasn't app.net an attempt to be a paid Twitter? I don't disagree with this being where things needs to go, but I feel like you either need some critical mass of initial users (what college students were for Facebook), or you need exclusive content (Obama and then Trump really made Twitter the place-to-be for political discourse), or if it really is a "utility", you need it to be a monopoly (like the phone system). So the real question to me is, which of these will it be? Part of me wonders if the next social network might be something that arises in the halo of a place where people already spend money online to have social interactions— Twitch being an obvious example, but even the non-social streaming services are candidates for this. Everyone has and pays for Netflix. What if part of Netflix was access to a no frills, bullshit-free social network? That would be a pretty wild pivot, but they have the resources and technical expertise, and they sure have pivoted before.
- slver 5y agoTwitter itself is trying to move to a paid model with Twitter Blue. I'm looking forward to their experiment. Unfortunately there's absolutely nothing left in Twitter that makes it Twitter anymore. People are writing 20-30 tweet long threads, which are basically a long blog article, but presented in an infuriating format.