6 ms·

Anecdotal evidence: I had never messed with Instragram until I got a girlfriend whose peer group used that exclusively over Facebook. These are all in the 28-3

Anecdotal evidence: I had never messed with Instragram until I got a girlfriend whose peer group used that exclusively over Facebook. These are all in the 28-32 age range. It seems they were all eager to use a system that just focused on sharing photos and didn't want all the 'bloat' associated with Facebook. In addition to preferring the focus on photosharing, there was a sense of just wanting to be back on a network where they just dealt with the few people they cared about. Obviously Instagram falls under the Facebook umbrella, but it did serve as a wake up call to me about there possibly being a group of young professionals that is more than willing to completely ditch Facebook proper for something that better fits their social networking goals.

vinhboy 14y ago
Nah. I would bet they are just using it because of the filters. It makes all the photos look so artsy and romantic. I doubt it has anything to do with networking.
prawks 14y ago
An interesting concept I hadn't thought of: how desirable is it from an aging Facebook user to start off with a clean slate? Given the amount of people I now know in my age group complaining that no one on their Facebook feeds is relevant to their lives post-university, I'd imagine it's quite high. I know my Facebook feed has acquired quite a bit of cruft over the years.
- activepeanut 14y ago
  Another problem, post-university, is keeping a clean Facebook profile when all your new connections are professionals. G+ solve this with circles, but I don't know anyone on G+, and it's too easy to make privacy mistakes on Facebook. My Facebook profile is turning into my new Linkedin as I'm getting older.
  - nitrogen 14y ago
    You can still create friend lists in Facebook, but it's not nearly as easy as G+'s drag-and-drop circles UI.
  - prawks 14y ago
    Add to that family members, and you have pretty much the problem with Facebook currently (imo): focus. Unfortunately, it's also the only thing Facebook pretty much seeks to avoid, in favor of making the most connections between users as possible.
- k_kelly 14y ago
  Imagine this concept coming from school. I cant imagine the amount of bloat facebook will have for younger users. Having a thousand friends entirely from before college would make me jump to a new network as soon as it became popular on campus.
- personlurking 14y ago
  I delete people and don't feel bad about it thus I keep my FB(s) to minimum friend levels. I see a difference between people I like and have met vs. people who I share life experience with. I've kept the latter on my principal FB and subsequently created a separate FB for the former. Only those on the personal FB know about the acquaintance FB, but not vice-versa, of course. I don't even switch back and forth much, keeping it at a 80/20 time split. It works really well, actually.
  - prawks 14y ago
    My problem is that I delete many people, but I still have divides in groups: family, friends, co-workers, distant connections. Separate accounts seems to really be the only option aside from trudging through heaps of menus to make lists. I had a list relegated to family/distant connections, however I can't for the life of me find out how to configure it again, or find it for that matter.
waterlesscloud 14y ago
Do you mean that they don't use Facebook whatsoever, or that they use Instagram primarily?
jivatmanx 14y ago
At some point, there will be a paid social network with significant membership. This is likely to occur after some particularly egregious and underhanded sale/use of user data by Facebook. It's likely to be more popular among older professionals, who care more about their reputation because of their career, and don't care about paying a minimal fee.
- rthomas6 14y ago
  That would be kind of cool, actually. A $5 one-time fee for every user. It would keep out the riff-raff and spammers, and there would be no need to sell user content or even have ads at all.
  - div 14y ago
    A 5$ one-time fee is way too low. Advertisers will probably outspend anything that isn't a proper monthly subscription.
    - nwh 14y ago
      Isn't that approximately what Facebook makes per user, per year in advertising?
      - whacker 14y ago
        That must be the profit margin. $5 isn't enough to cover costs and living I think.
        josephagoss 14y ago
        $5 per user is equal to $5,000,000,000 for revenue and I think Facebook made $1,000,000,000 net profit last year, so Facebook makes about $4.5 per person gross and about $1 per person profit at the moment.
      - div 14y ago
        Facebook's North-American ARPU for the 2nd quarter was $3.20 (http://seekingalpha.com/article/756141-facebook-why-shares-are-cheap-if-the-company-can-boost-its-annual-revenues-per-user http://seekingalpha.com/article/756141-facebook-why-shares-a...). My main point was that a 5$ ONE TIME charge is way too low. Typically ARPU is calculated over a certain period of time (monthly, quarterly, yearly).
majormajor 14y ago
It is amusing that there's less friction to move to a new network than to clean up the old one. Unfriending (or hiding/muting/whatever while still actively using Facebook) is much more likely to be taken as an affront by your long-time Facebook friends than simply stopping using FB much. But eventually it seems like the same people will move to the new network of choice, and try to contact you there, and you've got the same problem all over again? Or you drift out of touch with that new network...
- drobati 14y ago
  I've had an instagram since it started and have watched friends slowly adopt. It really seemed to be catching fire in the past 3 months. So in my experience I've found that people follow me but because the tool doesn't very easily show if someone follows you back, without digging back and forth through your followers, it's very easy to just unfollow the friends who don't provide content I care about. It's more similar to Twitters model of pub/sub vs facebooks 1 to 1 dynamic. If I 'defriend' on facebook it forces you to defriend both ways right? I think facebook has made attempts at fixing this with subscriptions but ...
  - chrischen 14y ago
    On facebook if you unfriend someone the other person is still attached to you as a subscriber... but they'd only get your public content.
- grecy 14y ago
  > Unfriending (or hiding/muting/whatever while still actively using Facebook) is much more likely to be taken as an affront by your long-time Facebook friends than simply stopping using FB much. I've muted hundreds of people in my friends list, and they are none-the-wiser.
  - darklajid 14y ago
    Hundreds? As in > 200? Maybe the list shouldn't be called 'friends' anymore? That list is bigger than my list of Outlook + GMail contacts. As a prime example for a very different use of social networks: Can you explain to me how adding these people to your account (friends, acquaintances, whatever you name the list) adds, especially if they are muted and don't show up in your feed of social stuff (tm) anyway? Fascinating.

vinhboy 14y ago

Nah. I would bet they are just using it because of the filters. It makes all the photos look so artsy and romantic. I doubt it has anything to do with networking.

prawks 14y ago

An interesting concept I hadn't thought of: how desirable is it from an aging Facebook user to start off with a clean slate? Given the amount of people I now know in my age group complaining that no one on their Facebook feeds is relevant to their lives post-university, I'd imagine it's quite high. I know my Facebook feed has acquired quite a bit of cruft over the years.

activepeanut 14y ago
Another problem, post-university, is keeping a clean Facebook profile when all your new connections are professionals. G+ solve this with circles, but I don't know anyone on G+, and it's too easy to make privacy mistakes on Facebook. My Facebook profile is turning into my new Linkedin as I'm getting older.
- nitrogen 14y ago
  You can still create friend lists in Facebook, but it's not nearly as easy as G+'s drag-and-drop circles UI.
- prawks 14y ago
  Add to that family members, and you have pretty much the problem with Facebook currently (imo): focus. Unfortunately, it's also the only thing Facebook pretty much seeks to avoid, in favor of making the most connections between users as possible.
k_kelly 14y ago
Imagine this concept coming from school. I cant imagine the amount of bloat facebook will have for younger users. Having a thousand friends entirely from before college would make me jump to a new network as soon as it became popular on campus.
personlurking 14y ago
I delete people and don't feel bad about it thus I keep my FB(s) to minimum friend levels. I see a difference between people I like and have met vs. people who I share life experience with. I've kept the latter on my principal FB and subsequently created a separate FB for the former. Only those on the personal FB know about the acquaintance FB, but not vice-versa, of course. I don't even switch back and forth much, keeping it at a 80/20 time split. It works really well, actually.
- prawks 14y ago
  My problem is that I delete many people, but I still have divides in groups: family, friends, co-workers, distant connections. Separate accounts seems to really be the only option aside from trudging through heaps of menus to make lists. I had a list relegated to family/distant connections, however I can't for the life of me find out how to configure it again, or find it for that matter.

waterlesscloud 14y ago

Do you mean that they don't use Facebook whatsoever, or that they use Instagram primarily?

jivatmanx 14y ago

At some point, there will be a paid social network with significant membership. This is likely to occur after some particularly egregious and underhanded sale/use of user data by Facebook. It's likely to be more popular among older professionals, who care more about their reputation because of their career, and don't care about paying a minimal fee.

rthomas6 14y ago
That would be kind of cool, actually. A $5 one-time fee for every user. It would keep out the riff-raff and spammers, and there would be no need to sell user content or even have ads at all.
- div 14y ago
  A 5$ one-time fee is way too low. Advertisers will probably outspend anything that isn't a proper monthly subscription.
  - nwh 14y ago
    Isn't that approximately what Facebook makes per user, per year in advertising?
    - whacker 14y ago
      That must be the profit margin. $5 isn't enough to cover costs and living I think.
      - josephagoss 14y ago
        $5 per user is equal to $5,000,000,000 for revenue and I think Facebook made $1,000,000,000 net profit last year, so Facebook makes about $4.5 per person gross and about $1 per person profit at the moment.
    - div 14y ago
      Facebook's North-American ARPU for the 2nd quarter was $3.20 (http://seekingalpha.com/article/756141-facebook-why-shares-are-cheap-if-the-company-can-boost-its-annual-revenues-per-user http://seekingalpha.com/article/756141-facebook-why-shares-a...). My main point was that a 5$ ONE TIME charge is way too low. Typically ARPU is calculated over a certain period of time (monthly, quarterly, yearly).

majormajor 14y ago

It is amusing that there's less friction to move to a new network than to clean up the old one. Unfriending (or hiding/muting/whatever while still actively using Facebook) is much more likely to be taken as an affront by your long-time Facebook friends than simply stopping using FB much. But eventually it seems like the same people will move to the new network of choice, and try to contact you there, and you've got the same problem all over again? Or you drift out of touch with that new network...

drobati 14y ago
I've had an instagram since it started and have watched friends slowly adopt. It really seemed to be catching fire in the past 3 months. So in my experience I've found that people follow me but because the tool doesn't very easily show if someone follows you back, without digging back and forth through your followers, it's very easy to just unfollow the friends who don't provide content I care about. It's more similar to Twitters model of pub/sub vs facebooks 1 to 1 dynamic. If I 'defriend' on facebook it forces you to defriend both ways right? I think facebook has made attempts at fixing this with subscriptions but ...
- chrischen 14y ago
  On facebook if you unfriend someone the other person is still attached to you as a subscriber... but they'd only get your public content.
grecy 14y ago
> Unfriending (or hiding/muting/whatever while still actively using Facebook) is much more likely to be taken as an affront by your long-time Facebook friends than simply stopping using FB much. I've muted hundreds of people in my friends list, and they are none-the-wiser.
- darklajid 14y ago
  Hundreds? As in > 200? Maybe the list shouldn't be called 'friends' anymore? That list is bigger than my list of Outlook + GMail contacts. As a prime example for a very different use of social networks: Can you explain to me how adding these people to your account (friends, acquaintances, whatever you name the list) adds, especially if they are muted and don't show up in your feed of social stuff (tm) anyway? Fascinating.