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There is something else going on around FB. Almost all activity online has shifted away from the Social Graph to a Content Graph. Almost nobody wants to see wh

by jmacd 5y ago

There is something else going on around FB. Almost all activity online has shifted away from the Social Graph to a Content Graph. Almost nobody wants to see what their friends are doing online anymore. In a lot of ways it can be cringey. People just want the latest, catchiest content. TikTok and Youtube are the OGs here, but it's everywhere when you start to look. Twitter timeline changes being an awkward but working example. Discovery > Static friends list. The entire premise FB was founded on is eroding. This isn't just Apple privacy and some regulatory strangulation. It's seismic to the business. The reason most people are still going to Facebook is incompatible with their primary activities online which is: consuming content from people-you-don't-know. Facebook is where you find out your highschool friend is super in to a MLM, your uncle has drastic political views you don't share, and that your historical social class and network is largely irrelevant to your life a decade later. They are doing everything they can to try to move in this direction, but the more they push it the less useful Facebook is for the average user. Instagram's discovery page is a prime example. But Reels are less good than TikTok, and whatever they are doing for short form video in Facebook is surely a hopeless game of catch up. This is classical innovator's dilemma. The very idea that Zuckerberg straight up said they need to copy the competition harder is incomprehensible considering the resources they have. They are going to try to do a few things. One is to anti-trust Apple (in the media at least), and the other is to hand wave (Metaverse). The reason the Metaverse was such a non sequitur is that it is so clearly a last minute thrust coming out of the C-Suite. If you've ever worked at a highly visible tech pubco, you've seen this happen before. Weak quarters mean that product announcements get pushed up. When it is as all encompassing as the Metaverse announcement, you know something is up.

yalogin 5y ago
Yep, you nailed it. TikTok is hitting Facebook and they are unable to respond. May be they will by copying the algorithm but things are going to get worse before they improve. Not sure if they will change Facebook itself though. That is too entrenched and too many users to change. This is going to be tough for fb to fight.
- lovefeature 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
BaldricksGhost 5y ago
"Facebook is where you find out your highschool friend is super in to a MLM, your uncle has drastic political views you don't share, and that your historical social class and network is largely irrelevant to your life a decade later." This is probably the most accurate description of Facebook I've seen.
- mathattack 5y ago
  Yes. There are some social groups that still use it (“no practice today”) but the novelty has gone and the youngsters have moved on. If the value of the graph increases exponentially with users, each user leaving causes a disproportionate value drop.
- hoffspot 5y ago
  It's really a perfect assessment. I couldn't articulate why exactly Facebook felt like I was purely wasting time each time I engaged with the experience (few times a year). This description completely crystallizes my thinking.
- ubermonkey 5y ago
  I'm reminded of a Twitter joke from (according to the WaPo) @KevinFarzad: "HEY IT'S ME your facebook friend from high school who never left our hometown & thinks Olive Garden is fancy. Anyway, here's a racist article."
  - circa 5y ago
    lol classic
    - fooperdupes 5y ago
      lol classist
      - Jackpillar 5y ago
JoshTko 5y ago
I would listen to your podcast.
msluyter 5y ago
Agree with most of this, but I'm curious where Facebook groups fit in here. We recently moved to Florida and have been scrambling to find non-religious home school friends for our daughter (homeschooling because of Covid). Facebook has been pretty much only resource available, and I've joined a number of local groups that have proved somewhat helpful. I'm wondering whether groups may provide a level of stickiness and user retention that the timeline may not?
- jmacd 5y ago
  Facebook Groups and Marketplace are both good examples of content graphs. Your social network is irrelevant to them, in fact you may prefer NOT to see the listings made by your friends/family as the negotiation/purchasing is often nicer when it is relatively anonymous. Facebook's one moat is very shallow in this space. Unlike high attention media with placement and interstitial opportunities, Marketplace and Groups are not great business models.
  - tpmx 5y ago
    The social network graphs of the people contributing to e.g. a local group or marketplace helps in making sure that people behave somewhat honestly, I've found. At least in locales with like < 5k people.
- skydhash 5y ago
  Like a more friendlier Reddit?
- tekknik 5y ago
  > have been scrambling to find non-religious home school friends for our daughter Why do they have to be non-religious?
  - kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
    Why ask why? That’s their stated preference.
metalliqaz 5y ago
I use Facebook more these days than I did 5 years ago. It has replaced Craigslist as the place to go for local things, especially buy/sell/trade. Our town, and even certain villages within the town, has a few discussion groups that is where I hear all the important talk/annoucements about what is going on. Groups tend to be like a Subreddit but with geographic IRL connections instead of anonymous interest-based associations. Perhaps I'm just an outlier, but it's the same with Twitter for me. I use it more these days than I did some years ago, but I also use it mostly like an RSS feed. I follow video game devs, musicians, etc. so I can be kept in the loop on the latest releases and whatnot. I think you make a good point about content graph. I think there is some truth to that, although I have never really taken any interest in anything but the kind of content that YouTube offers.
- carlgreene 5y ago
  This is the exact same situation as me. As I’ve revisited old hobbies I used to be obsessed with 10-15 years ago, I realize that EVERYTHING has moved from the VB-based forums, to Facebook groups and marketplace. I don’t mind the marketplace architecture, it’s quite nice actually. But Groups is the absolute worst place to house former forum content because it’s just not indexed well. There a few groups that I’m in that are managed really well, which gives them ~60% the utility of a tradition forum still. What I’ve done on FB is aggressively unfollowed every single friend and page that I don’t care about. My feed is now strictly a feed of group posts from people I don’t know about my hobbies that I enjoy…it’s actually quite nice!
  - metalliqaz 5y ago
    Yes I agree completely about how poor Facebook is at indexing old content. They are definitely not focused on anything but the absolute present. Same with Reddit. It's really too bad. I understand, though. People just don't have the will to figure out BBcode or create logins for every forum they are interested in.
TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
Facebook was never ever about the Social Graph. It was always about user profiling and activity/interest monitoring which could be sold to advertisers. The Social Graph was just one tool for that. Coincidentally the profiling is also extremely useful for political leverage and behaviour mod. I'm sure that never occurred to anyone around the company, and the links to operations like AggregateIQ and Cambridge Analytica are incidental among the ad noise. The incoming anti-trust cases are going to be interesting.
- jmacd 5y ago
  That is right in terms of the business. For the consumer though, the Social Graph did (and does) have real utility. It just has zero business value now as it isn't even useful for the retargeting data.
- w_t_payne 5y ago
  Election years are big money years for the entire Ad industry. Political advertising is not something that a sane Advertising company will ignore.
  - redisman 5y ago
    Facebook has basically been a magical money printing machine for political fundraising. Put a dollar in with a nice outrageous ad and get two back in donations.
ubermonkey 5y ago
I think there are a lot of people who are in my position, which is "I would absolutely love to ditch FB entirely, but I can't because of ____". The value of ____ might be "seeing pictures of family", or it might be "coordination of/participation in a group that has settled on Facebook as the easiest path" (<-- this is me), or it might be "professionally necessary to be there" or a number of other things. But none of these are positive reasons. There is no love of Facebook behind any of them. It's Facebook being tolerated. This is bad for Meta. This is probably good for society at large, though. Or at least I hope it will be.
- peckrob 5y ago
  Yup, Facebook has their tentacles in so many places that walking away from it is difficult, especially if you are involved in local community activities. My neighborhood exclusively uses Facebook for neighborhood communication. My kid's school PTA exclusively uses Facebook. Most of the local food trucks only post their schedules on Facebook. Since the pandemic started I have been taking the opportunity to go through my house and clean out lots of things that have just been hanging around for years. I list everything I sell on Facebook, Craigslist, OfferUp, and Nextdoor. I can’t remember the last time I got a bite from any of the other services that aren't Facebook. It’s been awhile. It honestly drives me be crazy how this company has wormed their way into being such an essential piece of communication infrastructure for so many people that I can’t quit without sacrificing my ability to participate in some of the things I really enjoy. So I begrudgingly tolerate Facebook.
  - ubermonkey 5y ago
    For me, it's the local cycling community. Rides and ride groups all use it as their point of coordination. >Most of the local food trucks only post their schedules on Facebook. Oh, god, that's annoying. I've actually seen some businesses forgo a proper web site and instead JUST USE FB, which is crazy annoying.
    - AstroJetson 5y ago
      This!! But its even worse, they don't update their FB page. So I'm forced to use FB to find where they are this week to find their last update was August 2021.
tallanvor 5y ago
I'm not sure this is right. I think the problem with Facebook is that long ago it shifted to a content graph in terms of use. I have less than 60 people friended because I limit it to people I actually know and want to know what they're up to, and by and large they're people that aren't constantly sharing memes, videos, or other crap. Of course, this means that I can check it out once a week and that's enough to keep up with everything, which doesn't make Facebook money. I believe the reason Instagram, Snapchat, and now TikTok grew the way they did was because the parents weren't on those apps. Even now we see that young people migrate to other platforms as their parents start paying attention to the current one.
- llampx 5y ago
  In terms of monetization, isn't it more profitable to sell ads to decision-makers aka older people, than to kids and teens?
  - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    Depends on whether you’re focused on immediate sales or building long-term brand image. The old person may only have one car purchase left in their lifetime; the 14-year-old could have six or more.
  - makeitdouble 5y ago
    These decision makers can be way tougher and more expensive to convince. I don’t want to buy the next card game booster pack in any way or form. I don’t care about theme parks I’ve never heard of, or the new game that lets me save a half naked hottie. And for that matter I also won’t change for a new car insurance. Now, someone in my life pushing for the formers might force my hand.
  - simmanian 5y ago
    Ads targeting kids and teens actually tend to do very well. There's an entire side of youtube where kids review their new (sponsored) toys. Parents get immensely pressured when they feel their kids are getting left out.
mymythisisthis 5y ago
Facebook replaced the phone book. In the 1990s it was difficult to find someone's contact information. With Google, you can find a way to contact someone, find their email. With everyone having smartphones you can find a way to get a text message to someone.
adventured 5y ago
The reason Facebook is losing, is because they're boxing with two hands behind their back. They're blocked by de facto anti-trust from ever acquiring their relevant competitors. Acquisitions are a critical instrument for large corporations in terms of competition. TikTok's parent, ByteDance, is not restricted by such problems despite how massive they are, for example. ByteDance is a $400 billion market cap company that doesn't have to play the game the same way Facebook does despite the fact that they're clearly competing in the same tier of scale now. And that's not a statement of woe-is-Facebook, nobody should feel bad for Facebook, it's just the fact of the real context they're stuck with and their giant competitor is not.
- basisword 5y ago
  >> Acquisitions are a critical instrument for large corporations in terms of competition. TikTok's parent, ByteDance, is not restricted by such problems despite how massive they are, for example. Don’t forget the US came perilously close to banning TikTok last year. As much as Facebook probably doesn’t have the US government on their side, it’s more on their side that TikTok’s.
safog 5y ago
Re: metaverse, it's not really a handwavey after thought - they've been investing quite significantly ($10bn lost last year alone while all of Google's bets including deepmind and waymo lost ~1.45bn. >10k people working on it now AFAIK). I think Facebook just got burned by not having a hardware platform this cycle - Apple and Google control the phones and Microsoft has the PC, XBox etc. They just want control over the next big hardware platform. Whether that's a reasonable bet or not who knows? But I wouldn't be as dismissive of their ambitions in the space.
- redisman 5y ago
  I just wonder where the software for it is at. Oculus is chugging along and I believe that can get quite good. But building a impressive MMO-like 3D world/game is probably a 5-10 year endeavor and runs a high risk that it won’t be fun or novel. I guess they’ll mainly build the platforms but then they need someone to build the worlds on top of it.
  - hyferg 5y ago
    Zenith VR might fit your definition of MMO like 3D game.
it_does_follow 5y ago
What all of this points out is that Facebook never really solved the "MySpace/Friendster" problem, they just had the better product at the right time and were able to get a few more years of safety by acquiring threats (which is not a long term strategy). It's wild that FB has become such a highly valued company despite the fact that they have always been resting on rather shaky foundations. We can also start to see Goodhart's Law in action at scale. Running your company by constantly optimizing for metrics (as so many startups mimic now) eventually does catch up to you. The vitriolic content that initially got them massive engagement eventually gets more and more people repulsed by the service. In the end, just like MySpace and Friendster, there is nothing that really prevents users from exiting from the platform extremely fast once the tide of the network effect turns the other way.
- redisman 5y ago
  Seems right. In my and my close friends/family experience it’s all the same - all the cool/interesting people stopped posting many years ago and with each one, more and more followed them or got bored and stopped going. Now it’s just the dorks posting stale memes or boring updates. I haven’t posted anything actively for many years now but still check it now and then and shake my head. I think it started a slow bleed when they removed the chronological view. After that it became “evil” and not about social connection anymore. No longer was my post being seen by my friends unless the algo thought it was saucy enough. It was a great business but I dont think you’ll ever get the people who are fed up to come back.
browningstreet 5y ago
I really do miss the utility apps of the early 2000s that went social. I'm travelling soon and want to re-visit a restaurant I went to some time ago and none of the apps on my phone will make it easy to look up where it was I ate before. When I was living abroad in the early 2000s, the social apps like Foursquare made that kind of utility-to-me feature fun and useful. FB, as a social platform, is moving away from being a social app. Same thing happened to other social apps. The original utility they had in the early days was subsumed by social, which is now being subsumed by something else. The original utility can't be found anywhere... it was dragged down into the depths and drowned. In some ways, my iPhone now is less useful to me than it was before. I can look things up in the moment, but in terms of connecting me to my past activities -- not so much.
- mrgordon 5y ago
  Better to check in on Google Maps rather than Foursquare so you keep your history when the small companies pivot away or abandon the service. It is bizarre to me that Foursquare didn’t keep it going though
pkdpic 5y ago
> They are going to try to do a few things. One is to anti-trust Apple (in the media at least), and the other is to hand wave (Metaverse). What does 'hand wave' mean in this context?
- sn1de 5y ago
  As in 'slight of hand' employed by a magician. Where someone makes an obvious movement to distract from something they don't want you to see. In this case, the assertion is that the Metaverse is more hype than reality. A shiny object, or concept, to create a plausible narrative that bridges Facebook into a future where they once again dominate, while distracting from the possibility that their current position is in decline with no tangible mitigation plan.
anxrn 5y ago
Feels like Yahoo in the days it realized it was losing the search arms race to Google and Microsoft. There was this uneasy sense of the underlying seismic shift and that the game had changed and you didn't have the best hand.
olivermarks 5y ago
Bizarre how Tiktok went from being a Chinese sovereign state/public enemy that was going to be 'bought' by Oracle/Walmart but is now starting to destroy the 2nd gen social networks, the original concern. I've assumed for a while FB was being sunset'd/Yahoo'd to prep for a next gen surveillance capitalism engine but the TT Chinese data mining allowance continues to surprise. Meanwhile the 'off' platforms - Rumble etc - continue to expand, and given Trump's vast small donation $100m+ war chest it seems likely there will increasingly politicized factional networks very soon
- iszomer 5y ago
  I wouldn't mind if the CCP wants to own all the garbage content on tiktok as a tactic against us, as long as people are aware of the nonsense hosted on there. Thanks, @libsoftiktok.
52-6F-62 5y ago
Only if you're a marketer and see others as little more than consumers. Next thing to burn is commoditization of "content" as the young see through the nonsense and reach out for sincerity. There are mountains of quality information online and while I would absolutely resent having to grow up in the age of social media, the kids are way better at parsing and questioning rapid onslaughts of information because of the tribulations there. They get caught up for a while, but the guise wears away. Young people can easily see outside their immediate world, and any adopted worldview, unlike we've ever known. When I was growing up that meant a lonely kid wandering down to the library to flip through magazines from the big city to inject some new ideas into one's world. Now, young people from anywhere can dig into the most arcane of information and worldviews in seconds and begin integrating them earlier on in their lives. The world will look very different in outlook in a short amount of time, and it will not be for the sake of "content". Just gimme some truth, all I want is some truth.
adlorger 5y ago
i believe this is true but it is not reflected in the public earnings at all. User growth in the US may be flat but earnings per US/CA active user is up which implies that the value is here and growing for users in the US/CA
mullingitover 5y ago
> Almost nobody wants to see what their friends are doing online anymore. Fact. I unfollowed pretty much every person connected to me on facebook, and now my feed consists primarily of posts from 'This cat is C H O N K Y', 'Foods with threatening auras,' and the like. Huge quality of life improvement, second only to basically never using Facebook at all.
- AceyMan 5y ago
  well, chonky cats are always a QOL improvement (-:
  - tekknik 5y ago
    I’m personally more interested in the food with threatening auras. That sounds…interesting
zjaffee 5y ago
Honestly the reason I use facebook still is to consume content from people I don't know, facebook groups are the only social thing left on the website, and the rest of it I use for fb marketplace which at least in my area has totally stolen the spotlight from craigslist.
MichaelMoser123 5y ago
Interesting: is it possible that this shift towards the content graph has something to do with a more active approach to content moderation? I mean, if your whacky aunt says something on covid, then it seems that he gets a nice label and that his message are propagated to a smaller number of his friends. Is it possible that all these moderation mechanisms have had a ripple effect on the entire network? I mean is it possible that the active stance on content moderation (some call it censorship) has caused the shift towards the content graph versus the social graph? In other words: if they choose to show less content by your whacky aunts, then they still need to fill the timeline with something, so welcome to the content graph! I mean to say that a change of editorial policy in a given media outlet is often related to a change of political direction; is that the case? Funny aspect: big tech wants to obtan some real influence and weight in society, so they introduce more censorship as a means of obtaining this weight. Now incidentially this erodes their base, as their clients loose interest in the toy, and start to use something else instead.
annadane 5y ago
One reason the Metaverse bothers me so much is a) because it's related to the company in general calling itself Meta, which itself is most likely a smokescreen to distract from the company's negative image and b) because it includes all the properties Zuckerberg has directly lied about and made worse - notice how the Instagram people left after conflicts with Zuckerberg, how Whatsapp users are forced into data sharing with Facebook, how suddenly you need a Facebook for the Oculus - if Meta/Metaverse was a conglomeration of home grown properties, in-house, or at worst previously competitive products that neverthelss they did a good job with and fostered to grow, and weren't annoying to use, and didn't pull bait and switch - why, sure, this Metaverse thing might seem like a pretty neat idea. As it stands, not only is Zuckerberg's vision of a utopia "copy and kill everyone else" but Meta/Metaverse is directly using basically stolen properties ("let's buy up these guys to destroy the competition")
- gscott 5y ago
  https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2022/02/01/mom-opens-up-about-being-virtually-gang-raped-in-metaverse/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2022/02/01/mom-opens...
MaanuAir 5y ago
Maybe it’s becoming a major media source? You know, like your on-demand TV channel that knows what you want, already.
- fragmede 5y ago
  And I'll watch that TV with my 3D glasses.
ricardobayes 5y ago
I think at this point 'Groups' are single-handedly keeping fb alive.
- hkt 5y ago
  I deleted my FB account and the only thing that I went back for was my residents association. I still have no FB friends - which is fun because I can see the algorithm trying to work out who I know. Eerily, it correctly identified my partner and suggests I friend her (and her mother!) every time I login.
  - tekknik 5y ago
    > Eerily, it correctly identified my partner and suggests I friend her (and her mother!) every time I login. That doesn’t seem that eerie to me. Your partner is most likely logging in from the same IP, and perhaps your mother-in-law has done the same at least once, or is friended to your partner. Making this association is pretty straightforward
    - hkt 5y ago
      This would seem reasonable, but in the UK we commonly have carrier grade NAT, which is to say I share an IP with really rather a lot of people. It'd be interesting to see if that was the case. Maybe I'll send a subject access request.
rednerrus 5y ago
It seems like it should be easy for FB to pivot to the content graph. Their ability to serve relevant ads is unrivaled. They should be able to do the same with content. Old people buy stuff and love FB. MLM people love Instagram and buy stuff. FB should just roll out a new short video platform, pay influencers a lot to join, and use their algorithm to recommend the best content.

by jmacd 5y ago

yalogin 5y ago

Yep, you nailed it. TikTok is hitting Facebook and they are unable to respond. May be they will by copying the algorithm but things are going to get worse before they improve. Not sure if they will change Facebook itself though. That is too entrenched and too many users to change. This is going to be tough for fb to fight.

lovefeature 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

BaldricksGhost 5y ago

"Facebook is where you find out your highschool friend is super in to a MLM, your uncle has drastic political views you don't share, and that your historical social class and network is largely irrelevant to your life a decade later." This is probably the most accurate description of Facebook I've seen.

mathattack 5y ago
Yes. There are some social groups that still use it (“no practice today”) but the novelty has gone and the youngsters have moved on. If the value of the graph increases exponentially with users, each user leaving causes a disproportionate value drop.
hoffspot 5y ago
It's really a perfect assessment. I couldn't articulate why exactly Facebook felt like I was purely wasting time each time I engaged with the experience (few times a year). This description completely crystallizes my thinking.
ubermonkey 5y ago
I'm reminded of a Twitter joke from (according to the WaPo) @KevinFarzad: "HEY IT'S ME your facebook friend from high school who never left our hometown & thinks Olive Garden is fancy. Anyway, here's a racist article."
- circa 5y ago
  lol classic
  - fooperdupes 5y ago
    lol classist
    - Jackpillar 5y ago

JoshTko 5y ago

I would listen to your podcast.

msluyter 5y ago

Agree with most of this, but I'm curious where Facebook groups fit in here. We recently moved to Florida and have been scrambling to find non-religious home school friends for our daughter (homeschooling because of Covid). Facebook has been pretty much only resource available, and I've joined a number of local groups that have proved somewhat helpful. I'm wondering whether groups may provide a level of stickiness and user retention that the timeline may not?

jmacd 5y ago
Facebook Groups and Marketplace are both good examples of content graphs. Your social network is irrelevant to them, in fact you may prefer NOT to see the listings made by your friends/family as the negotiation/purchasing is often nicer when it is relatively anonymous. Facebook's one moat is very shallow in this space. Unlike high attention media with placement and interstitial opportunities, Marketplace and Groups are not great business models.
- tpmx 5y ago
  The social network graphs of the people contributing to e.g. a local group or marketplace helps in making sure that people behave somewhat honestly, I've found. At least in locales with like < 5k people.
skydhash 5y ago
Like a more friendlier Reddit?
tekknik 5y ago
> have been scrambling to find non-religious home school friends for our daughter Why do they have to be non-religious?
- kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
  Why ask why? That’s their stated preference.

metalliqaz 5y ago

I use Facebook more these days than I did 5 years ago. It has replaced Craigslist as the place to go for local things, especially buy/sell/trade. Our town, and even certain villages within the town, has a few discussion groups that is where I hear all the important talk/annoucements about what is going on. Groups tend to be like a Subreddit but with geographic IRL connections instead of anonymous interest-based associations. Perhaps I'm just an outlier, but it's the same with Twitter for me. I use it more these days than I did some years ago, but I also use it mostly like an RSS feed. I follow video game devs, musicians, etc. so I can be kept in the loop on the latest releases and whatnot. I think you make a good point about content graph. I think there is some truth to that, although I have never really taken any interest in anything but the kind of content that YouTube offers.

carlgreene 5y ago
This is the exact same situation as me. As I’ve revisited old hobbies I used to be obsessed with 10-15 years ago, I realize that EVERYTHING has moved from the VB-based forums, to Facebook groups and marketplace. I don’t mind the marketplace architecture, it’s quite nice actually. But Groups is the absolute worst place to house former forum content because it’s just not indexed well. There a few groups that I’m in that are managed really well, which gives them ~60% the utility of a tradition forum still. What I’ve done on FB is aggressively unfollowed every single friend and page that I don’t care about. My feed is now strictly a feed of group posts from people I don’t know about my hobbies that I enjoy…it’s actually quite nice!
- metalliqaz 5y ago
  Yes I agree completely about how poor Facebook is at indexing old content. They are definitely not focused on anything but the absolute present. Same with Reddit. It's really too bad. I understand, though. People just don't have the will to figure out BBcode or create logins for every forum they are interested in.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago

Facebook was never ever about the Social Graph. It was always about user profiling and activity/interest monitoring which could be sold to advertisers. The Social Graph was just one tool for that. Coincidentally the profiling is also extremely useful for political leverage and behaviour mod. I'm sure that never occurred to anyone around the company, and the links to operations like AggregateIQ and Cambridge Analytica are incidental among the ad noise. The incoming anti-trust cases are going to be interesting.

jmacd 5y ago
That is right in terms of the business. For the consumer though, the Social Graph did (and does) have real utility. It just has zero business value now as it isn't even useful for the retargeting data.
w_t_payne 5y ago
Election years are big money years for the entire Ad industry. Political advertising is not something that a sane Advertising company will ignore.
- redisman 5y ago
  Facebook has basically been a magical money printing machine for political fundraising. Put a dollar in with a nice outrageous ad and get two back in donations.

ubermonkey 5y ago

I think there are a lot of people who are in my position, which is "I would absolutely love to ditch FB entirely, but I can't because of ____". The value of ____ might be "seeing pictures of family", or it might be "coordination of/participation in a group that has settled on Facebook as the easiest path" (<-- this is me), or it might be "professionally necessary to be there" or a number of other things. But none of these are positive reasons. There is no love of Facebook behind any of them. It's Facebook being tolerated. This is bad for Meta. This is probably good for society at large, though. Or at least I hope it will be.

peckrob 5y ago
Yup, Facebook has their tentacles in so many places that walking away from it is difficult, especially if you are involved in local community activities. My neighborhood exclusively uses Facebook for neighborhood communication. My kid's school PTA exclusively uses Facebook. Most of the local food trucks only post their schedules on Facebook. Since the pandemic started I have been taking the opportunity to go through my house and clean out lots of things that have just been hanging around for years. I list everything I sell on Facebook, Craigslist, OfferUp, and Nextdoor. I can’t remember the last time I got a bite from any of the other services that aren't Facebook. It’s been awhile. It honestly drives me be crazy how this company has wormed their way into being such an essential piece of communication infrastructure for so many people that I can’t quit without sacrificing my ability to participate in some of the things I really enjoy. So I begrudgingly tolerate Facebook.
- ubermonkey 5y ago
  For me, it's the local cycling community. Rides and ride groups all use it as their point of coordination. >Most of the local food trucks only post their schedules on Facebook. Oh, god, that's annoying. I've actually seen some businesses forgo a proper web site and instead JUST USE FB, which is crazy annoying.
  - AstroJetson 5y ago
    This!! But its even worse, they don't update their FB page. So I'm forced to use FB to find where they are this week to find their last update was August 2021.

tallanvor 5y ago

I'm not sure this is right. I think the problem with Facebook is that long ago it shifted to a content graph in terms of use. I have less than 60 people friended because I limit it to people I actually know and want to know what they're up to, and by and large they're people that aren't constantly sharing memes, videos, or other crap. Of course, this means that I can check it out once a week and that's enough to keep up with everything, which doesn't make Facebook money. I believe the reason Instagram, Snapchat, and now TikTok grew the way they did was because the parents weren't on those apps. Even now we see that young people migrate to other platforms as their parents start paying attention to the current one.

llampx 5y ago
In terms of monetization, isn't it more profitable to sell ads to decision-makers aka older people, than to kids and teens?
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  Depends on whether you’re focused on immediate sales or building long-term brand image. The old person may only have one car purchase left in their lifetime; the 14-year-old could have six or more.
- makeitdouble 5y ago
  These decision makers can be way tougher and more expensive to convince. I don’t want to buy the next card game booster pack in any way or form. I don’t care about theme parks I’ve never heard of, or the new game that lets me save a half naked hottie. And for that matter I also won’t change for a new car insurance. Now, someone in my life pushing for the formers might force my hand.
- simmanian 5y ago
  Ads targeting kids and teens actually tend to do very well. There's an entire side of youtube where kids review their new (sponsored) toys. Parents get immensely pressured when they feel their kids are getting left out.

mymythisisthis 5y ago

Facebook replaced the phone book. In the 1990s it was difficult to find someone's contact information. With Google, you can find a way to contact someone, find their email. With everyone having smartphones you can find a way to get a text message to someone.

adventured 5y ago

The reason Facebook is losing, is because they're boxing with two hands behind their back. They're blocked by de facto anti-trust from ever acquiring their relevant competitors. Acquisitions are a critical instrument for large corporations in terms of competition. TikTok's parent, ByteDance, is not restricted by such problems despite how massive they are, for example. ByteDance is a $400 billion market cap company that doesn't have to play the game the same way Facebook does despite the fact that they're clearly competing in the same tier of scale now. And that's not a statement of woe-is-Facebook, nobody should feel bad for Facebook, it's just the fact of the real context they're stuck with and their giant competitor is not.

basisword 5y ago
>> Acquisitions are a critical instrument for large corporations in terms of competition. TikTok's parent, ByteDance, is not restricted by such problems despite how massive they are, for example. Don’t forget the US came perilously close to banning TikTok last year. As much as Facebook probably doesn’t have the US government on their side, it’s more on their side that TikTok’s.

safog 5y ago

Re: metaverse, it's not really a handwavey after thought - they've been investing quite significantly ($10bn lost last year alone while all of Google's bets including deepmind and waymo lost ~1.45bn. >10k people working on it now AFAIK). I think Facebook just got burned by not having a hardware platform this cycle - Apple and Google control the phones and Microsoft has the PC, XBox etc. They just want control over the next big hardware platform. Whether that's a reasonable bet or not who knows? But I wouldn't be as dismissive of their ambitions in the space.

redisman 5y ago
I just wonder where the software for it is at. Oculus is chugging along and I believe that can get quite good. But building a impressive MMO-like 3D world/game is probably a 5-10 year endeavor and runs a high risk that it won’t be fun or novel. I guess they’ll mainly build the platforms but then they need someone to build the worlds on top of it.
- hyferg 5y ago
  Zenith VR might fit your definition of MMO like 3D game.

it_does_follow 5y ago

What all of this points out is that Facebook never really solved the "MySpace/Friendster" problem, they just had the better product at the right time and were able to get a few more years of safety by acquiring threats (which is not a long term strategy). It's wild that FB has become such a highly valued company despite the fact that they have always been resting on rather shaky foundations. We can also start to see Goodhart's Law in action at scale. Running your company by constantly optimizing for metrics (as so many startups mimic now) eventually does catch up to you. The vitriolic content that initially got them massive engagement eventually gets more and more people repulsed by the service. In the end, just like MySpace and Friendster, there is nothing that really prevents users from exiting from the platform extremely fast once the tide of the network effect turns the other way.

redisman 5y ago
Seems right. In my and my close friends/family experience it’s all the same - all the cool/interesting people stopped posting many years ago and with each one, more and more followed them or got bored and stopped going. Now it’s just the dorks posting stale memes or boring updates. I haven’t posted anything actively for many years now but still check it now and then and shake my head. I think it started a slow bleed when they removed the chronological view. After that it became “evil” and not about social connection anymore. No longer was my post being seen by my friends unless the algo thought it was saucy enough. It was a great business but I dont think you’ll ever get the people who are fed up to come back.

browningstreet 5y ago

I really do miss the utility apps of the early 2000s that went social. I'm travelling soon and want to re-visit a restaurant I went to some time ago and none of the apps on my phone will make it easy to look up where it was I ate before. When I was living abroad in the early 2000s, the social apps like Foursquare made that kind of utility-to-me feature fun and useful. FB, as a social platform, is moving away from being a social app. Same thing happened to other social apps. The original utility they had in the early days was subsumed by social, which is now being subsumed by something else. The original utility can't be found anywhere... it was dragged down into the depths and drowned. In some ways, my iPhone now is less useful to me than it was before. I can look things up in the moment, but in terms of connecting me to my past activities -- not so much.

mrgordon 5y ago
Better to check in on Google Maps rather than Foursquare so you keep your history when the small companies pivot away or abandon the service. It is bizarre to me that Foursquare didn’t keep it going though

pkdpic 5y ago

> They are going to try to do a few things. One is to anti-trust Apple (in the media at least), and the other is to hand wave (Metaverse). What does 'hand wave' mean in this context?

sn1de 5y ago
As in 'slight of hand' employed by a magician. Where someone makes an obvious movement to distract from something they don't want you to see. In this case, the assertion is that the Metaverse is more hype than reality. A shiny object, or concept, to create a plausible narrative that bridges Facebook into a future where they once again dominate, while distracting from the possibility that their current position is in decline with no tangible mitigation plan.

anxrn 5y ago

Feels like Yahoo in the days it realized it was losing the search arms race to Google and Microsoft. There was this uneasy sense of the underlying seismic shift and that the game had changed and you didn't have the best hand.

olivermarks 5y ago

Bizarre how Tiktok went from being a Chinese sovereign state/public enemy that was going to be 'bought' by Oracle/Walmart but is now starting to destroy the 2nd gen social networks, the original concern. I've assumed for a while FB was being sunset'd/Yahoo'd to prep for a next gen surveillance capitalism engine but the TT Chinese data mining allowance continues to surprise. Meanwhile the 'off' platforms - Rumble etc - continue to expand, and given Trump's vast small donation $100m+ war chest it seems likely there will increasingly politicized factional networks very soon

iszomer 5y ago
I wouldn't mind if the CCP wants to own all the garbage content on tiktok as a tactic against us, as long as people are aware of the nonsense hosted on there. Thanks, @libsoftiktok.

52-6F-62 5y ago

Only if you're a marketer and see others as little more than consumers. Next thing to burn is commoditization of "content" as the young see through the nonsense and reach out for sincerity. There are mountains of quality information online and while I would absolutely resent having to grow up in the age of social media, the kids are way better at parsing and questioning rapid onslaughts of information because of the tribulations there. They get caught up for a while, but the guise wears away. Young people can easily see outside their immediate world, and any adopted worldview, unlike we've ever known. When I was growing up that meant a lonely kid wandering down to the library to flip through magazines from the big city to inject some new ideas into one's world. Now, young people from anywhere can dig into the most arcane of information and worldviews in seconds and begin integrating them earlier on in their lives. The world will look very different in outlook in a short amount of time, and it will not be for the sake of "content". Just gimme some truth, all I want is some truth.

adlorger 5y ago

i believe this is true but it is not reflected in the public earnings at all. User growth in the US may be flat but earnings per US/CA active user is up which implies that the value is here and growing for users in the US/CA

mullingitover 5y ago

> Almost nobody wants to see what their friends are doing online anymore. Fact. I unfollowed pretty much every person connected to me on facebook, and now my feed consists primarily of posts from 'This cat is C H O N K Y', 'Foods with threatening auras,' and the like. Huge quality of life improvement, second only to basically never using Facebook at all.

AceyMan 5y ago
well, chonky cats are always a QOL improvement (-:
- tekknik 5y ago
  I’m personally more interested in the food with threatening auras. That sounds…interesting

zjaffee 5y ago

Honestly the reason I use facebook still is to consume content from people I don't know, facebook groups are the only social thing left on the website, and the rest of it I use for fb marketplace which at least in my area has totally stolen the spotlight from craigslist.

MichaelMoser123 5y ago

Interesting: is it possible that this shift towards the content graph has something to do with a more active approach to content moderation? I mean, if your whacky aunt says something on covid, then it seems that he gets a nice label and that his message are propagated to a smaller number of his friends. Is it possible that all these moderation mechanisms have had a ripple effect on the entire network? I mean is it possible that the active stance on content moderation (some call it censorship) has caused the shift towards the content graph versus the social graph? In other words: if they choose to show less content by your whacky aunts, then they still need to fill the timeline with something, so welcome to the content graph! I mean to say that a change of editorial policy in a given media outlet is often related to a change of political direction; is that the case? Funny aspect: big tech wants to obtan some real influence and weight in society, so they introduce more censorship as a means of obtaining this weight. Now incidentially this erodes their base, as their clients loose interest in the toy, and start to use something else instead.

annadane 5y ago

One reason the Metaverse bothers me so much is a) because it's related to the company in general calling itself Meta, which itself is most likely a smokescreen to distract from the company's negative image and b) because it includes all the properties Zuckerberg has directly lied about and made worse - notice how the Instagram people left after conflicts with Zuckerberg, how Whatsapp users are forced into data sharing with Facebook, how suddenly you need a Facebook for the Oculus - if Meta/Metaverse was a conglomeration of home grown properties, in-house, or at worst previously competitive products that neverthelss they did a good job with and fostered to grow, and weren't annoying to use, and didn't pull bait and switch - why, sure, this Metaverse thing might seem like a pretty neat idea. As it stands, not only is Zuckerberg's vision of a utopia "copy and kill everyone else" but Meta/Metaverse is directly using basically stolen properties ("let's buy up these guys to destroy the competition")

gscott 5y ago
https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2022/02/01/mom-opens-up-about-being-virtually-gang-raped-in-metaverse/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2022/02/01/mom-opens...

MaanuAir 5y ago

Maybe it’s becoming a major media source? You know, like your on-demand TV channel that knows what you want, already.

fragmede 5y ago
And I'll watch that TV with my 3D glasses.

ricardobayes 5y ago

I think at this point 'Groups' are single-handedly keeping fb alive.

hkt 5y ago
I deleted my FB account and the only thing that I went back for was my residents association. I still have no FB friends - which is fun because I can see the algorithm trying to work out who I know. Eerily, it correctly identified my partner and suggests I friend her (and her mother!) every time I login.
- tekknik 5y ago
  > Eerily, it correctly identified my partner and suggests I friend her (and her mother!) every time I login. That doesn’t seem that eerie to me. Your partner is most likely logging in from the same IP, and perhaps your mother-in-law has done the same at least once, or is friended to your partner. Making this association is pretty straightforward
  - hkt 5y ago
    This would seem reasonable, but in the UK we commonly have carrier grade NAT, which is to say I share an IP with really rather a lot of people. It'd be interesting to see if that was the case. Maybe I'll send a subject access request.

rednerrus 5y ago

It seems like it should be easy for FB to pivot to the content graph. Their ability to serve relevant ads is unrivaled. They should be able to do the same with content. Old people buy stuff and love FB. MLM people love Instagram and buy stuff. FB should just roll out a new short video platform, pay influencers a lot to join, and use their algorithm to recommend the best content.