7 ms·

> People were on facebook for the features facebook had. People were on Facebook for the people that were on Facebook.

by grog454 4y ago

TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
One of the features of Facebook was the people who were on Facebook.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  Where have they "gone"?
  - TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
    They were on Facebook. They still are, but they were too.
owlninja 4y ago
Anecdotally I quit Facebook in 2016 but of my friends and family that still use it, I would say most simply use it for marketplace. They may still view the updates that people still post to see what's going on but it doesn't seem to be near as about keeping in touch (I'm in the US).
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  Marketplace and the groups for goods or meeting up are full scammers and time wasters People are under the illusion of some fleeting chance of working as advertised
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    Yep. One of the reasons that old-style classified ads in newspapers worked is that you had to pay to post an ad. Did people run scams in newspaper classifieds? Yes, but by and large the ads were legit. Today, legitimate online marketplace ads are drowned by the scam ads.
- stevenjgarner 4y ago
  For those of us in families that are spread over the globe in a dozen time zones and separated in different countries, what other methods of connection even come close to social media? Facebook (and the rest) have provided a way for us to vicariously experience glimpses into each other's lives and in many cases reconnect with people who we never would have otherwise.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    I would point out that email also serves here but with worse algorithms for displaying what you want to see :-)
  - owlninja 4y ago
    I can understand this for sure! In my experience Facebook degraded and a lot of people that just posted pictures with small updates moved to Instagram. Again, anecdotally, I have a pocket of friends in Prague and they mostly used Instagram. But now Instagram is moving the same way with a clutter of suggested posts or 'reels' - or whatever their version is.
  - jhugo 4y ago
    My extended family shares a paid Slack instance and it works great. Some of them are on Facebook as well, mostly for marketplace and groups; I don't use FB (I am not really interested in seeing glimpses of distant relatives' lives). I think there is a real future for services targeting the middle ground between the very public nature of Facebook and the very private nature of an email.
  - cassianoleal 4y ago
    I have siblings, cousins and other relatives and friends spread around the globe. We keep in touch over Signal, WhatsApp, FaceTime, Jitsi, Messages... It's a little more work. We don't speak as often as we used to see each other's posts on Facebook but when we do get in touch it's a lot more personal and meaningful. It's not rare either. I speak to some pretty much daily, others weekly to monthly, and others perhaps more spread apart but it's always great when we do get in touch. No vicarious experiences, no voyeurism into one another's lifes. Only pure and intentional human connection with all the imperfections that come with it. I recommend it.
- klodolph 4y ago
  As far as I can tell, marketplace has displaced Craigslist. It's still low-friction and local, but a bit more trustworthy.
  - mjhagen 4y ago
    And this is was what people warned us about when FB became the new single destination. It became its own walled off version of the web.
    - klodolph 4y ago
      I think it's nice. It provides some additional accountability that Craigslist doesn't provide. I don't know what you mean by "walled-of version of the web". At least, I don't know what kind of warning you are talking about, with respect to Facebook Marketplace.
      - aceazzameen 4y ago
        I think they mean Facebook is the new AOL where it has it's own content (Marketplace) that non-users can't access. While Craigslist is available to anyone on the web.
- paganel 4y ago
  Some of the private groups are still pretty good, it's what the web should have been, could have been, if a better commenting system had been in place and if we had had a better aggregator.
nrdvana 4y ago
And they were on Facebook instead of MySpace because Facebook worked better for sharing news snippets. Then facebook changes to the "most interacted-with posts", then politics took a dump on everypne's sharing from about 2015 onward, then facebook changed to a bunch of spammy videos from "content creators", and most of everyone gave up and left. I lost track of the number of people saying (myself included) "Give me all my friends posts, in chronological order", and facebook just ignored us and slowly removed the ability to do anything close to that. Ironic how Google tried Google+ and failed because Facebook had all the users and content. If Google had just shelved theirs as-is for 10 years and pulled it back out now, people would flock to it because it would actually be a feed of your friends/family posts in chronological order, with user-customized filtering, again.

> People were on facebook for the features facebook had. People were on Facebook for the people that were on Facebook.

TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago

One of the features of Facebook was the people who were on Facebook.

andsoitis 4y ago
Where have they "gone"?
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
  They were on Facebook. They still are, but they were too.

owlninja 4y ago

Anecdotally I quit Facebook in 2016 but of my friends and family that still use it, I would say most simply use it for marketplace. They may still view the updates that people still post to see what's going on but it doesn't seem to be near as about keeping in touch (I'm in the US).

yieldcrv 4y ago
Marketplace and the groups for goods or meeting up are full scammers and time wasters People are under the illusion of some fleeting chance of working as advertised
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  Yep. One of the reasons that old-style classified ads in newspapers worked is that you had to pay to post an ad. Did people run scams in newspaper classifieds? Yes, but by and large the ads were legit. Today, legitimate online marketplace ads are drowned by the scam ads.
stevenjgarner 4y ago
For those of us in families that are spread over the globe in a dozen time zones and separated in different countries, what other methods of connection even come close to social media? Facebook (and the rest) have provided a way for us to vicariously experience glimpses into each other's lives and in many cases reconnect with people who we never would have otherwise.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  I would point out that email also serves here but with worse algorithms for displaying what you want to see :-)
- owlninja 4y ago
  I can understand this for sure! In my experience Facebook degraded and a lot of people that just posted pictures with small updates moved to Instagram. Again, anecdotally, I have a pocket of friends in Prague and they mostly used Instagram. But now Instagram is moving the same way with a clutter of suggested posts or 'reels' - or whatever their version is.
- jhugo 4y ago
  My extended family shares a paid Slack instance and it works great. Some of them are on Facebook as well, mostly for marketplace and groups; I don't use FB (I am not really interested in seeing glimpses of distant relatives' lives). I think there is a real future for services targeting the middle ground between the very public nature of Facebook and the very private nature of an email.
- cassianoleal 4y ago
  I have siblings, cousins and other relatives and friends spread around the globe. We keep in touch over Signal, WhatsApp, FaceTime, Jitsi, Messages... It's a little more work. We don't speak as often as we used to see each other's posts on Facebook but when we do get in touch it's a lot more personal and meaningful. It's not rare either. I speak to some pretty much daily, others weekly to monthly, and others perhaps more spread apart but it's always great when we do get in touch. No vicarious experiences, no voyeurism into one another's lifes. Only pure and intentional human connection with all the imperfections that come with it. I recommend it.
klodolph 4y ago
As far as I can tell, marketplace has displaced Craigslist. It's still low-friction and local, but a bit more trustworthy.
- mjhagen 4y ago
  And this is was what people warned us about when FB became the new single destination. It became its own walled off version of the web.
  - klodolph 4y ago
    I think it's nice. It provides some additional accountability that Craigslist doesn't provide. I don't know what you mean by "walled-of version of the web". At least, I don't know what kind of warning you are talking about, with respect to Facebook Marketplace.
    - aceazzameen 4y ago
      I think they mean Facebook is the new AOL where it has it's own content (Marketplace) that non-users can't access. While Craigslist is available to anyone on the web.
paganel 4y ago
Some of the private groups are still pretty good, it's what the web should have been, could have been, if a better commenting system had been in place and if we had had a better aggregator.

nrdvana 4y ago

And they were on Facebook instead of MySpace because Facebook worked better for sharing news snippets. Then facebook changes to the "most interacted-with posts", then politics took a dump on everypne's sharing from about 2015 onward, then facebook changed to a bunch of spammy videos from "content creators", and most of everyone gave up and left. I lost track of the number of people saying (myself included) "Give me all my friends posts, in chronological order", and facebook just ignored us and slowly removed the ability to do anything close to that. Ironic how Google tried Google+ and failed because Facebook had all the users and content. If Google had just shelved theirs as-is for 10 years and pulled it back out now, people would flock to it because it would actually be a feed of your friends/family posts in chronological order, with user-customized filtering, again.