4 ms·
I agree that the space is crowded. And there are other issues raising the barrier to entry: user fatigue and national/supra-national legislation (like the EU a
by martinced 14y ago
I agree that the space is crowded. And there are other issues raising the barrier to entry: user fatigue and national/supra-national legislation (like the EU anti-cookie thing etc.) which may dampen your enthusiasm in case you thought about creating yet another social thinggy.
Even on the almighty social network I can not just feel (that I could since a long time) but also see people complaining.
No latter than today I opened FB just to see one post by a friend and lots of comments about the lack of privacy on FB and why FB "knew too much" about individuals.
It's also quite amazing: that friend (and several of those who answered) hardly post anything anymore there. And the consensus was pretty much: "I'm not posting anything nor commenting on anything on FB, except when it's to bitch about FB's policies and use of our data".
Non-techies friends btw.
I'd say the problem for mainstream users is that some apps are too targeted: it may be both effective (and the most cost effective way to advertize and reach your audience), it's also creepy to many users. There are some users who realize that any site they open, anything they 'like', any video they watch is used to target them more and more. As a result they're not liking stuff anymore, not opening their mouth, not opening friends' links, etc.
- laumars 14y agoThis is true for me to. Particularly the last bit, I never "like" embedded content (links, videos, etc), and never click the links themselves either (if I care, then I Google the description to find the link outside of Facebook).
- bilbo0s 14y agoFacebook still knows you did that. Going there at all associates the link to your FB profile. You may want to use a VM without FB logged in if you don't want FB to know what you are doing. Maybe even on another net connection... but that's only for the ultra paranoid.
- laumars 14y agoI can't see how Facebook would know without the destination sending your details back to Facebook. And in those instances, the destination site wouldn't know if I've ended up there after a suggestion on my friend stream or because a cat randomly jumped on my keyboard and coincidently typed their search pattern into Google. So such statistics would be pretty meaningless to all but our other internet overloads, Google.
- rayiner 14y agoWait till the current internet generation hits their 30's and gets real jobs they're afraid to lose. All the opinionated Facebook chattering my friends did in college has all but dried up now, and has been replaced with fake names and low profiles during recruiting season. In this job market, and with idiotic new features like graph search, having a Facebook presence is a liability for all but the most whitewashed profiles.
- yuhong 14y agoI am for fixing these problems if possible, of course.
- stcredzero 14y ago> Non-techies friends btw. Non-techies friends FTW, but only if they're good enough friends to tell you how it is, even if it risks hurting your feelings.
- NegativeK 14y ago> I'd say the problem for mainstream users is that some apps are too targeted: it may be both effective (and the most cost effective way to advertize and reach your audience), it's also creepy to many users. This was Target's realization, was it not? They were doing super-specific targeting and analytics, like sending coupons for pregnant women (to the ire of a teenage woman's dad,) and later switched to "hiding" the coupons in irrelevant coupons so the pack looked more generic. Personally, I'd much rather receive the focused coupons. I'm not going to stop a company from learning about me unless I go paranoid, so I might as well receive insight as to what it thinks it knows. Five minutes ago I thought that Amazon, Netflix, and Pandora simply couldn't nail my tastes, but perhaps they're in some long game of not creeping me out and knowing that I'll return _some_day_.