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> I don't see how introducing flashy short videos that produce a dopamine hit in the easily amused is going to grow Facebook I can easily see this pivot lead t

by klabb3 4y ago

> I don't see how introducing flashy short videos that produce a dopamine hit in the easily amused is going to grow Facebook I can easily see this pivot lead to a short term growth, but I don't get why this metric is so blindly trusted, when it's clearly more complex. (If there is one thing I really appreciate about engineers, is that most of us understand trade-offs, and our null-hypothesis is that almost everything is a tradeoff. Growth is NO exception) Concretely, Facebook sits on arguably the most valuable asset in ad-tech today: the most complete real life social graph that has ever existed. Secondary, they have been very successful with mindless doom-scrolling that drove up the value of their business like crazy. Now, Tiktok has come along and likely by chance found an even more powerful doom-scroller, the dopamine 9000, and they've been spreading like crazy. Of course that takes away ad-views from FB. FB is in panic mode and going on a meth-like crunch to copy-paste-rebrand tiktoks engagement machine. This may seem sound, doom-scrolling makes a lot of money after all. But here's the problem: there will be more tiktoks in the future, and the barrier of entry isn't insane anymore. Building a social graph, however, one that includes uncles and grandmas for the entire world? That's a LOT harder. If I were Facebook (and a cynical douche) I would weather out the storm, carefully learning from tiktok and others, slowly evolving the product while "respecting" (low bar) the current user base. Now I have no doubt that FB and IG can pivot to become a worse tiktok and yet still call it a success, making engagement shoot up short term. But by doing so, they dilute their product even more. Lots of people, like me, have primarily left because of this ongoing pivot - others are less sensitive and stay, for now. But pivoting so aggressively is a very risky move. If 20% of the local pottery/yoga/parent group refuses to use fb, the next casual group will go somewhere else instead. At the end of the day, FB is making itself more and more replaceable.

labrador 4y ago
> Now, Tiktok has come along and likely by chance found an even more powerful doom-scroller, the dopamine 9000 I don't think older people who were raised in a longer attention span world (without even flashy jump cuts on TV) will find short attention span videos appealing. I could be wrong. One thing that would tell me I'm wrong is if there was a robust amount of people over 40 on TikTok. I don't have that data, but Facebook probably does. Edit: Only a quarter of TikTok users are over 34 years old https://www.omnicoreagency.com/tiktok-statistics/ https://www.omnicoreagency.com/tiktok-statistics/
- klabb3 4y ago
  I have observed almost the opposite. Sure, younger people are early adoptors but the older folks don't have a natural resistance and are easily hooked. People addicted to Facebook are increasingly middle aged. That's another reason why I think fb needs to calm their tits and chill out a bit – sure, Tiktok is super popular at the moment but this level of addiction is something I expect younger generations to cope with better. It wouldn't surprise me if the tiktok reign will be short lived. TV is a good example, because it had a similar effect on hijacking previously unexplored attention mechanisms. It's also a good example because it deteriorated into an irrecoverable ad-hell, yet younger generations found refuge in higher quality substitutes (Netflix etc) and now cable is dying slowly (as they should). Thanks to a modernized and relatively sane approach, tv as a medium is better and makes more money than ever. It speaks to the fact that in the long run, consumers will go elsewhere when giants feed them crap products and – importantly – by the time they do, the giants are unable to keep up.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ethbr0 4y ago
Facebook needs to stop being afraid to launch new products. They should have launched a TikTok clone as an independent brand. Instead, they're falling into the Microsoft trap of "Everything has to be shoehorned into our existing userbase and products."
- Infinitesimus 4y ago
  They did in fact launch a clone https://about.fb.com/news/2021/09/launching-reels-on-facebook-us/ https://about.fb.com/news/2021/09/launching-reels-on-faceboo... but it has not taken the world by storm. The hard work is figuring what dethrones TikTok and building _that_
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    Yes, within the Facebook app. Which was the point of my comment: Facebook needs to be more daring and launch non-Facebook brands for products that are not like Facebook. (Or Instagram, etc)

by klabb3 4y ago

labrador 4y ago

> Now, Tiktok has come along and likely by chance found an even more powerful doom-scroller, the dopamine 9000 I don't think older people who were raised in a longer attention span world (without even flashy jump cuts on TV) will find short attention span videos appealing. I could be wrong. One thing that would tell me I'm wrong is if there was a robust amount of people over 40 on TikTok. I don't have that data, but Facebook probably does. Edit: Only a quarter of TikTok users are over 34 years old https://www.omnicoreagency.com/tiktok-statistics/ https://www.omnicoreagency.com/tiktok-statistics/

klabb3 4y ago
I have observed almost the opposite. Sure, younger people are early adoptors but the older folks don't have a natural resistance and are easily hooked. People addicted to Facebook are increasingly middle aged. That's another reason why I think fb needs to calm their tits and chill out a bit – sure, Tiktok is super popular at the moment but this level of addiction is something I expect younger generations to cope with better. It wouldn't surprise me if the tiktok reign will be short lived. TV is a good example, because it had a similar effect on hijacking previously unexplored attention mechanisms. It's also a good example because it deteriorated into an irrecoverable ad-hell, yet younger generations found refuge in higher quality substitutes (Netflix etc) and now cable is dying slowly (as they should). Thanks to a modernized and relatively sane approach, tv as a medium is better and makes more money than ever. It speaks to the fact that in the long run, consumers will go elsewhere when giants feed them crap products and – importantly – by the time they do, the giants are unable to keep up.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ethbr0 4y ago

Facebook needs to stop being afraid to launch new products. They should have launched a TikTok clone as an independent brand. Instead, they're falling into the Microsoft trap of "Everything has to be shoehorned into our existing userbase and products."

Infinitesimus 4y ago
They did in fact launch a clone https://about.fb.com/news/2021/09/launching-reels-on-facebook-us/ https://about.fb.com/news/2021/09/launching-reels-on-faceboo... but it has not taken the world by storm. The hard work is figuring what dethrones TikTok and building _that_
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Yes, within the Facebook app. Which was the point of my comment: Facebook needs to be more daring and launch non-Facebook brands for products that are not like Facebook. (Or Instagram, etc)