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All privacy concerns aside, Facebook has had declining utility to me (and my loved ones) over the last few years, which has translated into less and less use by

by rjett 12y ago

All privacy concerns aside, Facebook has had declining utility to me (and my loved ones) over the last few years, which has translated into less and less use by everyone in my network. My news feed from three to five years ago was much more diverse in terms of content and number of people posting. Today, every other post is an ad, and in between are the posts of the remaining power users in my network. I'm not sure if anyone else has had this experience, but I would label the power users as the least common denominators in my network. Thus, my news feed has come to resemble a trashy tabloid magazine more so than a collection of the goings-ons of my network of friends. In my mind's eye, the Facebook ecosystem is like a corrupt, dangerous, almost comic book-like city: A lot of good people may still live there but they only occasionally peak out of the blinds from the protection of their homes and they rarely participate in the community. The streets are filled with trash, and the people running freely on the streets are lunatics and crooked cops. But maybe that's just my wild, childish imagination. I'm a much heavier user of instagram these days, which is probably just like a movie set with sunny skies built within this corrupt ecosystem of Facebook.

praetorian84 12y ago
This is my experience too. Most people are still on Facebook, but they are less and less active. And nothing gets me closing the page faster than seeing a bunch of advertising.
Mahn 12y ago
I can relate to this experience as well. For me, today, Facebook's utility is that of an address book of acquaintances, a place where you can contact people that you once came across but weren't close enough to ask for a phone or an email address. That's it.
testguy34 12y ago
Literally in every Facebook post there is someone saying how their Facebook feed is a mess and how Facebook is "declining." I'm sorry to tell you this, but it's you and the people you are friends with that are the problem. Not Facebook (all of their metrics and revenues are up). Try being friends with more interesting people (or at least mute the bad ones).
- ciupicri 12y ago
  That's just one side of story. On the other hand given how much Facebook supposedly knows, it could prioritize better what's shown in the news feed. There are high chances that even these people who are complaining, still have a couple of friends who post interesting stuff.
IgorPartola 12y ago
To me it has become like LinkedIn. It is a directory of people and a very occasional way to communicate via messenger and events. I have not used the newsfeed at all for about a year (except a few really specific occasions where I was told about something out of band). For entertainment, Imgur and HN fullfil my needs currently.
paraschopra 12y ago
Curious. What do you use to remain in touch with friends and relatives?
jasonbarone 12y ago
Wow, Facebook has been the exact opposite for me. When Google Reader started becoming too much work to manage, and its closure was on the radar, I moved to Facebook and decided to follow all the brands, companies, and people I'm interested in hearing from, much like what I did in Reader with RSS feeds. After that, I "Unfollowed" everyone I didn't want to hear from me. My news feed turned into exactly what I wanted it to– a resource where I can see everything important at glance. I separated things out into lists, and I made better, more targeted ways to find stories. It's constantly gotten better with things like "Followers vs Friends", Facebook pushing comments from your friends to the top, Facebook collecting "Shares" towards the top of your feed, lists, displaying links in a more attractive way, etc. And tastemakers and power users are using it more than ever. I don't know of any other way to stay connected to the things that matter other than Facebook. Twitter is just a noisy stream of links and quips that you can't keep up with. Linkedin is just awful. Reddit, HN and things like Techmeme are pretty much the only other places where the curation around topics are really good.
- ghaff 12y ago
  I find it interesting how people use Facebook in such widely different ways. For me, Facebook is strictly for friends--most of whom I don't have any sort of professional connection with. I never follow a brand/company/etc. on Facebook. I use Twitter and Google+ for professional stuff. (And still use RSS as well.)
  - pjbrunet 12y ago
    For me, Facebook = distant relatives. That's it. Todo: Get extended family on email list and delete Facebook.
- MrBra 12y ago
  Yes, and you're ok to sell yourself for that? Man, really?? Bands? subscribe to YouTube channels or twitter or mailing lists or what else , your friends? Call them. IT? Come here or use Reddit. This is just over simplification of it, I have ten times more interests than that, and it's not at all hard to manage them without Facebook. You could use some browsers specifically designed with integration of content as their primary feature, I don't remember the names but at some point I've tried a couple and was really impressed. But again, most importantly, are you really ok with selling yourself for ANY hypothetical advantage FB platform could offer. I never would...
varelse 12y ago
Exactly this... If I am friends with someone, I want their feed unless I explicitly turn it off. But then I remember that I am not the customer, I am the product. For I don't think the problem is that my less garrulous friends aren't writing about their lives, but rather that some stupid machine learning algorithm has decided on my behalf that I don't wish to hear from them because I don't tend to reply to or "like" the things they post. I know this because I occasionally seek their facebook pages out and find out what I've been missing. And still, blatant tangent, I can't edit my Facebook updates from the mobile client. That IMO is an example of the true robot apocalypse: a bunch of "performance enhancements" and marching moron machine learning algorithms that pass A/B tests by some ill-conceived metric and get inflicted on us all to improve shareholder value by Google, Facebook et al. Facebook isn't alone here: On my Android phone, Google Now was initially useful. It provided location-dependent weather, stock information, time/date-sensitive commute information along with occasional bits of news that related to frequent search terms. If only they'd stopped there. Recently, they "improved" it with a new ridiculously white-spaced layout (WTF is up with whitespacing a 6" screen anyway?) and a tsunami of distracting trivia about anything I had searched for in recent months and nearly every place I had driven, even #%$%ing gas stations and one-time doctor appointments. Obviously, this also passed some sort of A/B test to make it into production, but all it made me do was factory reset my phone and turn off nearly every feature of Google Now. And that's why IMO people are opting for relatively simpler systems like Instagram and Twitter.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  And Google Now keeps prompting me to turn on more tracking and history settings. Despite me opting out each time, I guess if they just keep asking, they'll trick people eventually.
  - tdkl 12y ago
    If you use voice actions, they also store voice recordings on the cloud. Google Now saddens me, since the obvious focus is now data collection (same goes for Fit), instead of working on the platform more (battery drain and memory leaks in Lollipop and they haven't even address it publicly after 3 months).
lnanek2 12y ago
Keep in mind that facebook filters your default feed view by who you interact with the most. So if you want more of a certain person's posts, make sure to like/comment on anything they post (and hopefully they do the same to you). It sounds like maybe you went passive so they can't surface what you want any more.
puranjay 12y ago
Facebook is now nothing more than a glorified feed reader for me. All actual communication happens on WhatsApp. All pictures from last night's party go on Instagram. Which is to say, Facebook is dead, but it is also very much alive and kicking

by rjett 12y ago

praetorian84 12y ago

This is my experience too. Most people are still on Facebook, but they are less and less active. And nothing gets me closing the page faster than seeing a bunch of advertising.

Mahn 12y ago

I can relate to this experience as well. For me, today, Facebook's utility is that of an address book of acquaintances, a place where you can contact people that you once came across but weren't close enough to ask for a phone or an email address. That's it.

testguy34 12y ago

Literally in every Facebook post there is someone saying how their Facebook feed is a mess and how Facebook is "declining." I'm sorry to tell you this, but it's you and the people you are friends with that are the problem. Not Facebook (all of their metrics and revenues are up). Try being friends with more interesting people (or at least mute the bad ones).

ciupicri 12y ago
That's just one side of story. On the other hand given how much Facebook supposedly knows, it could prioritize better what's shown in the news feed. There are high chances that even these people who are complaining, still have a couple of friends who post interesting stuff.

IgorPartola 12y ago

To me it has become like LinkedIn. It is a directory of people and a very occasional way to communicate via messenger and events. I have not used the newsfeed at all for about a year (except a few really specific occasions where I was told about something out of band). For entertainment, Imgur and HN fullfil my needs currently.

paraschopra 12y ago

Curious. What do you use to remain in touch with friends and relatives?

jasonbarone 12y ago

Wow, Facebook has been the exact opposite for me. When Google Reader started becoming too much work to manage, and its closure was on the radar, I moved to Facebook and decided to follow all the brands, companies, and people I'm interested in hearing from, much like what I did in Reader with RSS feeds. After that, I "Unfollowed" everyone I didn't want to hear from me. My news feed turned into exactly what I wanted it to– a resource where I can see everything important at glance. I separated things out into lists, and I made better, more targeted ways to find stories. It's constantly gotten better with things like "Followers vs Friends", Facebook pushing comments from your friends to the top, Facebook collecting "Shares" towards the top of your feed, lists, displaying links in a more attractive way, etc. And tastemakers and power users are using it more than ever. I don't know of any other way to stay connected to the things that matter other than Facebook. Twitter is just a noisy stream of links and quips that you can't keep up with. Linkedin is just awful. Reddit, HN and things like Techmeme are pretty much the only other places where the curation around topics are really good.

ghaff 12y ago
I find it interesting how people use Facebook in such widely different ways. For me, Facebook is strictly for friends--most of whom I don't have any sort of professional connection with. I never follow a brand/company/etc. on Facebook. I use Twitter and Google+ for professional stuff. (And still use RSS as well.)
- pjbrunet 12y ago
  For me, Facebook = distant relatives. That's it. Todo: Get extended family on email list and delete Facebook.
MrBra 12y ago
Yes, and you're ok to sell yourself for that? Man, really?? Bands? subscribe to YouTube channels or twitter or mailing lists or what else , your friends? Call them. IT? Come here or use Reddit. This is just over simplification of it, I have ten times more interests than that, and it's not at all hard to manage them without Facebook. You could use some browsers specifically designed with integration of content as their primary feature, I don't remember the names but at some point I've tried a couple and was really impressed. But again, most importantly, are you really ok with selling yourself for ANY hypothetical advantage FB platform could offer. I never would...

varelse 12y ago

Exactly this... If I am friends with someone, I want their feed unless I explicitly turn it off. But then I remember that I am not the customer, I am the product. For I don't think the problem is that my less garrulous friends aren't writing about their lives, but rather that some stupid machine learning algorithm has decided on my behalf that I don't wish to hear from them because I don't tend to reply to or "like" the things they post. I know this because I occasionally seek their facebook pages out and find out what I've been missing. And still, blatant tangent, I can't edit my Facebook updates from the mobile client. That IMO is an example of the true robot apocalypse: a bunch of "performance enhancements" and marching moron machine learning algorithms that pass A/B tests by some ill-conceived metric and get inflicted on us all to improve shareholder value by Google, Facebook et al. Facebook isn't alone here: On my Android phone, Google Now was initially useful. It provided location-dependent weather, stock information, time/date-sensitive commute information along with occasional bits of news that related to frequent search terms. If only they'd stopped there. Recently, they "improved" it with a new ridiculously white-spaced layout (WTF is up with whitespacing a 6" screen anyway?) and a tsunami of distracting trivia about anything I had searched for in recent months and nearly every place I had driven, even #%$%ing gas stations and one-time doctor appointments. Obviously, this also passed some sort of A/B test to make it into production, but all it made me do was factory reset my phone and turn off nearly every feature of Google Now. And that's why IMO people are opting for relatively simpler systems like Instagram and Twitter.

MichaelGG 12y ago
And Google Now keeps prompting me to turn on more tracking and history settings. Despite me opting out each time, I guess if they just keep asking, they'll trick people eventually.
- tdkl 12y ago
  If you use voice actions, they also store voice recordings on the cloud. Google Now saddens me, since the obvious focus is now data collection (same goes for Fit), instead of working on the platform more (battery drain and memory leaks in Lollipop and they haven't even address it publicly after 3 months).

lnanek2 12y ago

Keep in mind that facebook filters your default feed view by who you interact with the most. So if you want more of a certain person's posts, make sure to like/comment on anything they post (and hopefully they do the same to you). It sounds like maybe you went passive so they can't surface what you want any more.

puranjay 12y ago

Facebook is now nothing more than a glorified feed reader for me. All actual communication happens on WhatsApp. All pictures from last night's party go on Instagram. Which is to say, Facebook is dead, but it is also very much alive and kicking