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Unrelated but does anyone else get tired of the fetishization of BIG NUMBER? I don’t care if Facebook has billions of users if it’s a hot pile of garbage. I don

Unrelated but does anyone else get tired of the fetishization of BIG NUMBER? I don’t care if Facebook has billions of users if it’s a hot pile of garbage. I don’t care if some game has millions of players if it’s bad. When did BIG NUMBER overtake quality and can we go back?

chomp 4y ago
BIG NUMBER implies a dedication to the care and feeding. It’s a nudge and a wink for “come work for us” Number of users advertisement is more for investors, and maybe a broadcast for FOMO. There is, however, a tendency in our field to look for systems design patterns that handle big N numbers, and apply those to little N platforms, but I believe deep down that this is business and management dysfunction, as systems refactoring is tolerated even less than code refactoring.
latchkey 4y ago
- redanddead 4y ago
  Sounds fun, do tell
eurleif 4y ago
Quantity of users is social proof (more accurately, social evidence) of quality. The claim "we have high quality" is cheap: anyone can make it, and it's subjective enough that it can't be disproven in any absolute sense. But if you lie about having billions of users, you can be called out on that pretty easily; and if you say it honestly, it implies that billions of people like the quality of your product or service enough to use it. Billions of people can be wrong, but saying you have billions of users is still much better evidence of quality than saying you have quality.
- api 4y ago
  > Quantity of users is social proof (more accurately, social evidence) of quality. It can also be evidence of founder effects (JavaScript), lock in (Windows), network effects (most social media), etc.
  - qeternity 4y ago
    Those are all qualities that you’re painting in a negative light. You may not think Facebook deserves credit for its network effects, but a lot of people would disagree.
    - api 4y ago
      So you’re arguing that popularity is a proxy for quality? So astrology is correct? There’s endless examples of popular things that are nonsense. Of course the opposite is not true. Things are not bad because they are popular. I just don’t think there is any inherent correlation at all. Popularity generally measures memetic power and that’s it. Cold viruses are also popular.
      - qeternity 4y ago
        You're conflating "quality" for correctness, which is not what I said. Yes, astrology being popular means it is high quality entertainment value. Cold viruses being popular means they are high quality reproducers. And for Facebook, whose primary value is from network effects, popularity indeed means it is a high quality social network.
osigurdson 4y ago
It is a bit like music. One could state that all of the popular music is garbage (I might even state that myself some days), but in the end, the music purchasing public have spoken.
Maursault 4y ago
> I don’t care if Facebook has billions of users if it’s a hot pile of garbage. Shockingly, Apache Cassandra was initially developed at Facebook, so at least a hot pile of garbage is good for something. Plus, it'll keep you warm, so that's two things.

chomp 4y ago

BIG NUMBER implies a dedication to the care and feeding. It’s a nudge and a wink for “come work for us” Number of users advertisement is more for investors, and maybe a broadcast for FOMO. There is, however, a tendency in our field to look for systems design patterns that handle big N numbers, and apply those to little N platforms, but I believe deep down that this is business and management dysfunction, as systems refactoring is tolerated even less than code refactoring.

latchkey 4y ago

redanddead 4y ago
Sounds fun, do tell

eurleif 4y ago

Quantity of users is social proof (more accurately, social evidence) of quality. The claim "we have high quality" is cheap: anyone can make it, and it's subjective enough that it can't be disproven in any absolute sense. But if you lie about having billions of users, you can be called out on that pretty easily; and if you say it honestly, it implies that billions of people like the quality of your product or service enough to use it. Billions of people can be wrong, but saying you have billions of users is still much better evidence of quality than saying you have quality.

api 4y ago
> Quantity of users is social proof (more accurately, social evidence) of quality. It can also be evidence of founder effects (JavaScript), lock in (Windows), network effects (most social media), etc.
- qeternity 4y ago
  Those are all qualities that you’re painting in a negative light. You may not think Facebook deserves credit for its network effects, but a lot of people would disagree.
  - api 4y ago
    So you’re arguing that popularity is a proxy for quality? So astrology is correct? There’s endless examples of popular things that are nonsense. Of course the opposite is not true. Things are not bad because they are popular. I just don’t think there is any inherent correlation at all. Popularity generally measures memetic power and that’s it. Cold viruses are also popular.
    - qeternity 4y ago
      You're conflating "quality" for correctness, which is not what I said. Yes, astrology being popular means it is high quality entertainment value. Cold viruses being popular means they are high quality reproducers. And for Facebook, whose primary value is from network effects, popularity indeed means it is a high quality social network.

osigurdson 4y ago

It is a bit like music. One could state that all of the popular music is garbage (I might even state that myself some days), but in the end, the music purchasing public have spoken.

Maursault 4y ago

> I don’t care if Facebook has billions of users if it’s a hot pile of garbage. Shockingly, Apache Cassandra was initially developed at Facebook, so at least a hot pile of garbage is good for something. Plus, it'll keep you warm, so that's two things.