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Each of these: Markeplace, Forums, Messenger are non sticky and with countless alternatives. For example one could easily have two-three chat apps and use each

Each of these: Markeplace, Forums, Messenger are non sticky and with countless alternatives. For example one could easily have two-three chat apps and use each with different people. I still use Craigslist, I think it works better and has better organization of categories. The main Facebook app, now that is a unique product - yet frankly, from my perspective it feels completely marginalized, the content there is in worse shape than ever. I find the news feed absurdly bad, GAG videos and ads.

lumost 4y ago
The degree to which the main FB product rotted during the last few years was extreme. Scrolling FB was still a daily activity for me until the medium was overtaken by outrage. It seems like FB goosed conflict on the platform until everyone decided they’d had enough and left or stopped posting. There is nothing in the newsfeed from my contacts at this point, the feed is either entirely ads or bottom barrel MLM scams. Instagram is going the same direction with everyone growing exhausted from competition for likes. TikTok seems successful in part because the primary purpose isn't to engage with your friends. So where does that leave social networking amongst your peers? SMS seems to be making a comeback.
- LegitShady 4y ago
  have you considered that maybe facebook is giving you content based on other datapoints about you? Aside from the occasional scam ad, I mostly get animal videos from facebook.
  - lumost 4y ago
    Possible, but what does that say about their algorithm that they only give me stuff I don't want? At this point I login to FB maybe once a month to check community groups for my neighborhood. Animals could be a similar “no fill” response reflecting that your network doesn't have much going on.
    - LegitShady 4y ago
      >what does that say about their algorithm that they only give me stuff I don't want? Do you engage with political content on facebook or other platforms where facebook has tracking agreements? they're maximizing engagement. facebook knows I'm way more likely to click on a "we rescued a dog" video than political stuff, so doesn't show me political stuff. Their data points don't just come from the facebook website.
      - lumost 4y ago
        Possible, but that wouldn't explain the lack of posts from anyone else. I checked once or twice, but at most I see folks organically posting once every 6 months or less - at this point I think I'd be surprised if anyone saw those posts.
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    They do this kind of profile targeting so aggressively it’s absurd. I also almost only get animal content and the occasional post from an ace group I joined, because I generally only post pics of my pup and peak at said group once in a while. Every so often I get lured into looking at something I find politically awful, and just instantly I get inundated with even more awful productized distillation of it. If I so much as slow my scroll for ADHD content, I’m smothered in ads for really horrifying scams trying to sell me miracle cures or shady guaranteed diagnosis. Yeah, FB serves content which it thinks targets your brain as audience. But it does so in a really astonishingly stupid and toxic way.
    - jrumbut 4y ago
      It is astonishing. I generally enjoy Facebook and while there are ads and click bait a lot of my feed is just my friends talking nicely, but it's a strange subset of friends. I tried clicking on a few profiles I hadn't seen in a while and a lot of them had nice posts too. I saw everything from them for about a month then it disappeared again. I am very worried about what will become of all the very private stuff in their database as they begin to decay. Right now I assume it would take very sophisticated effort to steal all that messenger data, but what about if/when Facebook is a zombie company with a skeleton crew or an unloved subsidiary of a conglomerate?
      - istjohn 4y ago
        It's such a shame. I would LOVE to keep in touch with news from friends and family with a simple chronological feed, but every social media company insists on shoveling trash down my throat with an algorithm.
        dmitriid 4y ago
        A week or so ago a new tab appeared in my Facebook app that gives chronological timeline of people and groups I follow. I don't know if it's in Europe only: https://imgur.com/a/xMb2VWG https://imgur.com/a/xMb2VWG They did the same with Instagram. Click Instagram logo and select "Following" to get a chronological timeline. Possibly also only in Europe.
- scoofy 4y ago
  I think the strong disagreement in these threads are indicative of the new sub-culturing of social networks. I have friends who basically live in facebook, they are parents who spend most of their time looking for deals on marketplace. Meanwhile, most of my child-free friends have ditched facebook nearly a decade ago, and have either doubled down on reddit or have moved to tik tok. Whether or not the metaverse is anything but marking would require me to look at a balance sheet, but facebook seems to be moving through the business life-cycle at a much more rapid pace than i expected it to. They are wringing the value out of the product for revenue growth at the expense of long term adoption. Always a mixed bag but I'm sure an MBA could explain it better. Suffices to say. I have no idea whether or not their products have are long-run competitive, because I'm very much not the target demo.
- trhway 4y ago
  >Scrolling FB was still a daily activity for me until the medium was overtaken by outrage. i wonder if FB as result of all its A/B testing and engagement maximization has built a "faster horse".
colinmhayes 4y ago
Completely disagree. Those three things are all gated by intense network effects. Social media type products are generally as sticky as they come. Facebook will continue to be the platform that everyone uses, because who wants to be on a marketplace or messaging app that doesn't have the most people? > one could easily have two-three chat apps and use each with different people I guess theoretically, but in reality, no. People are going to use one app. Apple realized this with iMessage and it's become one of their biggest advantages in the U.S. market. Texting an iPhone user as an android user is legitimately a bad experience, because apple knows that their users aren't going to download a new chat app so they can go ahead and make the experience dogshit for the out group users.
- glofish 4y ago
  > who wants to be on a marketplace or messaging app that doesn't have the most people? But it doesn't have the most people. I have long lost that sense that FB is where everyone is. That feels so 2016 > Apple realized this with iMessage In general iMessage is not a good example because it a product that leverages the unique position of Apple owning the hardware. No other company can play the same game. Apple don't want you to use iMessage on other systems, they deliberately make the experience worse for Android. But who else can afford that? You definitely can seamlessly use Whatsapp, Viber, FB Messenger, Telegram and Signal all at the same time on all your devices.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    Your anecdote is noted, and I have a similar experience with regard to Facebook usage in my circle. That doesn’t change the fact that Facebook has more users than any other platform in the world. I think you misunderstand my point about iMessage. Apple users have a very good reason to use different chat apps. Most people probably text non iPhones every once in a while. Yet every iPhone user I know refuses to download other chat apps. It’s not like there’s a big barrier to getting WhatsApp, they just don’t want multiple chat apps. People who are already using WhatsApp feel the same way, and there’s much less reason for them to switch, since the product doesn’t purposefully knee cap users.
miohtama 4y ago
> Each of these: Markeplace, Forums, Messenger are non sticky and with countless alternatives True, but they are harder to maintain because of the spam. Facebook has more data on genuine users than a bank and it’s easy for them to block low quality or fraud posts. That’s the true value of Facebook - they know more about of your life than you do.
- glofish 4y ago
  > they know more about of your life than you do. Not so sure that they do. If they knew so much about me why is it that I dislike most that they show me? Perhaps - and that is now the most worrisome thought - that crap is the "best" they can show and everything else is much worse. Now that does not bode well for FB's future. Or Meta's, whatever, even their brand feels a lot dumber now.
  - dgfitz 4y ago
    > If they knew so much about me why is it that I dislike most that they show me? Disliking what they show you doesn’t mean they know less about you than a bank. It just means they’re not yet perfect in utilizing said information.
  - mingus88 4y ago
    > If they knew so much about me why is it that I dislike most that they show me? If you engage with it, they'll keep showing it to you. Their goal is not to make you happy, it's to keep you engaged so there is an audience for their ads. In fact, this is why the outrage engine everywhere on social media. People who are upset are going to need an outlet to blow off that steam.
matchagaucho 4y ago
No real alternatives if your parents, family, and friends only install one app.
- vcryan 4y ago
  Parents, family and friends being on Facebook seems like a reason not to have an account -- but maybe that's just me.
dmitriid 4y ago
All that can circle down the drain really quickly. Facebook was my go to place to find events around me. Now they've dumbed down the page and removed the ability to search by date and location, and made it useless. The same can and will happen to their other properties.
caffeine 4y ago
WhatsApp is probably their best property.
spurgu 4y ago
Agreed. Marketplace sucks compared to other alternatives out there (Craigslist has never been big in the European countries I've lived in so can't comment on that in particular). Groups are a horrible alternative to forums. An algorithm decides which posts are "hot" and posts die over time. Forums can provide highly informative long-running threads (which FB groups and Reddit cannot). Sure, manually moderating a forum is hard work but the end result is so much better. Messenger? There are so many better (and encrypted) alternatives to communication. The only thing FB has going for it is that almost everyone is there. It's super easy to hook up with someone you just met the other day just by searching for them on FB, sending a friend requests and then you can be chatting within minutes. You don't even necessarily need to know their name, you can go through list of friends of a common friend and look for them by face. All other solutions practically involves having to remember asking someone for their phone number. This is also why marketplace/groups are "successful", due to the sheer number of people already on the platform. As products they all pretty much suck.

lumost 4y ago

The degree to which the main FB product rotted during the last few years was extreme. Scrolling FB was still a daily activity for me until the medium was overtaken by outrage. It seems like FB goosed conflict on the platform until everyone decided they’d had enough and left or stopped posting. There is nothing in the newsfeed from my contacts at this point, the feed is either entirely ads or bottom barrel MLM scams. Instagram is going the same direction with everyone growing exhausted from competition for likes. TikTok seems successful in part because the primary purpose isn't to engage with your friends. So where does that leave social networking amongst your peers? SMS seems to be making a comeback.

LegitShady 4y ago
have you considered that maybe facebook is giving you content based on other datapoints about you? Aside from the occasional scam ad, I mostly get animal videos from facebook.
- lumost 4y ago
  Possible, but what does that say about their algorithm that they only give me stuff I don't want? At this point I login to FB maybe once a month to check community groups for my neighborhood. Animals could be a similar “no fill” response reflecting that your network doesn't have much going on.
  - LegitShady 4y ago
    >what does that say about their algorithm that they only give me stuff I don't want? Do you engage with political content on facebook or other platforms where facebook has tracking agreements? they're maximizing engagement. facebook knows I'm way more likely to click on a "we rescued a dog" video than political stuff, so doesn't show me political stuff. Their data points don't just come from the facebook website.
    - lumost 4y ago
      Possible, but that wouldn't explain the lack of posts from anyone else. I checked once or twice, but at most I see folks organically posting once every 6 months or less - at this point I think I'd be surprised if anyone saw those posts.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  They do this kind of profile targeting so aggressively it’s absurd. I also almost only get animal content and the occasional post from an ace group I joined, because I generally only post pics of my pup and peak at said group once in a while. Every so often I get lured into looking at something I find politically awful, and just instantly I get inundated with even more awful productized distillation of it. If I so much as slow my scroll for ADHD content, I’m smothered in ads for really horrifying scams trying to sell me miracle cures or shady guaranteed diagnosis. Yeah, FB serves content which it thinks targets your brain as audience. But it does so in a really astonishingly stupid and toxic way.
  - jrumbut 4y ago
    It is astonishing. I generally enjoy Facebook and while there are ads and click bait a lot of my feed is just my friends talking nicely, but it's a strange subset of friends. I tried clicking on a few profiles I hadn't seen in a while and a lot of them had nice posts too. I saw everything from them for about a month then it disappeared again. I am very worried about what will become of all the very private stuff in their database as they begin to decay. Right now I assume it would take very sophisticated effort to steal all that messenger data, but what about if/when Facebook is a zombie company with a skeleton crew or an unloved subsidiary of a conglomerate?
    - istjohn 4y ago
      It's such a shame. I would LOVE to keep in touch with news from friends and family with a simple chronological feed, but every social media company insists on shoveling trash down my throat with an algorithm.
      - dmitriid 4y ago
        A week or so ago a new tab appeared in my Facebook app that gives chronological timeline of people and groups I follow. I don't know if it's in Europe only: https://imgur.com/a/xMb2VWG https://imgur.com/a/xMb2VWG They did the same with Instagram. Click Instagram logo and select "Following" to get a chronological timeline. Possibly also only in Europe.
scoofy 4y ago
I think the strong disagreement in these threads are indicative of the new sub-culturing of social networks. I have friends who basically live in facebook, they are parents who spend most of their time looking for deals on marketplace. Meanwhile, most of my child-free friends have ditched facebook nearly a decade ago, and have either doubled down on reddit or have moved to tik tok. Whether or not the metaverse is anything but marking would require me to look at a balance sheet, but facebook seems to be moving through the business life-cycle at a much more rapid pace than i expected it to. They are wringing the value out of the product for revenue growth at the expense of long term adoption. Always a mixed bag but I'm sure an MBA could explain it better. Suffices to say. I have no idea whether or not their products have are long-run competitive, because I'm very much not the target demo.
trhway 4y ago
>Scrolling FB was still a daily activity for me until the medium was overtaken by outrage. i wonder if FB as result of all its A/B testing and engagement maximization has built a "faster horse".

colinmhayes 4y ago

Completely disagree. Those three things are all gated by intense network effects. Social media type products are generally as sticky as they come. Facebook will continue to be the platform that everyone uses, because who wants to be on a marketplace or messaging app that doesn't have the most people? > one could easily have two-three chat apps and use each with different people I guess theoretically, but in reality, no. People are going to use one app. Apple realized this with iMessage and it's become one of their biggest advantages in the U.S. market. Texting an iPhone user as an android user is legitimately a bad experience, because apple knows that their users aren't going to download a new chat app so they can go ahead and make the experience dogshit for the out group users.

glofish 4y ago
> who wants to be on a marketplace or messaging app that doesn't have the most people? But it doesn't have the most people. I have long lost that sense that FB is where everyone is. That feels so 2016 > Apple realized this with iMessage In general iMessage is not a good example because it a product that leverages the unique position of Apple owning the hardware. No other company can play the same game. Apple don't want you to use iMessage on other systems, they deliberately make the experience worse for Android. But who else can afford that? You definitely can seamlessly use Whatsapp, Viber, FB Messenger, Telegram and Signal all at the same time on all your devices.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Your anecdote is noted, and I have a similar experience with regard to Facebook usage in my circle. That doesn’t change the fact that Facebook has more users than any other platform in the world. I think you misunderstand my point about iMessage. Apple users have a very good reason to use different chat apps. Most people probably text non iPhones every once in a while. Yet every iPhone user I know refuses to download other chat apps. It’s not like there’s a big barrier to getting WhatsApp, they just don’t want multiple chat apps. People who are already using WhatsApp feel the same way, and there’s much less reason for them to switch, since the product doesn’t purposefully knee cap users.

miohtama 4y ago

> Each of these: Markeplace, Forums, Messenger are non sticky and with countless alternatives True, but they are harder to maintain because of the spam. Facebook has more data on genuine users than a bank and it’s easy for them to block low quality or fraud posts. That’s the true value of Facebook - they know more about of your life than you do.

glofish 4y ago
> they know more about of your life than you do. Not so sure that they do. If they knew so much about me why is it that I dislike most that they show me? Perhaps - and that is now the most worrisome thought - that crap is the "best" they can show and everything else is much worse. Now that does not bode well for FB's future. Or Meta's, whatever, even their brand feels a lot dumber now.
- dgfitz 4y ago
  > If they knew so much about me why is it that I dislike most that they show me? Disliking what they show you doesn’t mean they know less about you than a bank. It just means they’re not yet perfect in utilizing said information.
- mingus88 4y ago
  > If they knew so much about me why is it that I dislike most that they show me? If you engage with it, they'll keep showing it to you. Their goal is not to make you happy, it's to keep you engaged so there is an audience for their ads. In fact, this is why the outrage engine everywhere on social media. People who are upset are going to need an outlet to blow off that steam.

matchagaucho 4y ago

No real alternatives if your parents, family, and friends only install one app.

vcryan 4y ago
Parents, family and friends being on Facebook seems like a reason not to have an account -- but maybe that's just me.

dmitriid 4y ago

All that can circle down the drain really quickly. Facebook was my go to place to find events around me. Now they've dumbed down the page and removed the ability to search by date and location, and made it useless. The same can and will happen to their other properties.

caffeine 4y ago

WhatsApp is probably their best property.

spurgu 4y ago

Agreed. Marketplace sucks compared to other alternatives out there (Craigslist has never been big in the European countries I've lived in so can't comment on that in particular). Groups are a horrible alternative to forums. An algorithm decides which posts are "hot" and posts die over time. Forums can provide highly informative long-running threads (which FB groups and Reddit cannot). Sure, manually moderating a forum is hard work but the end result is so much better. Messenger? There are so many better (and encrypted) alternatives to communication. The only thing FB has going for it is that almost everyone is there. It's super easy to hook up with someone you just met the other day just by searching for them on FB, sending a friend requests and then you can be chatting within minutes. You don't even necessarily need to know their name, you can go through list of friends of a common friend and look for them by face. All other solutions practically involves having to remember asking someone for their phone number. This is also why marketplace/groups are "successful", due to the sheer number of people already on the platform. As products they all pretty much suck.