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Ask HN: Has social media reached its saturation point?

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Re: Ask HN: Has social media reached its saturation point?

#51

Post by geocrasher »

gberger wrote: post #17
geocrasher wrote: post #16

Nope. FB would have gone the way of MySpace already if that were the case. Rather than a saturation point, they've hit a plateau in many cases- where will they go next? Zuckerberg is looking to reinvent FB for the next stage of growth. Instead of "moar better FB" he realizes that there needs to be something that's not just more, but different. And if he does it right, everyone will flock to it like so many did in the…

Isn't a saturation point a synonym for a plateau? Once something is saturated with X, you cannot add any more X to it.

A plateau is more like a flat spot before more growth. Saturation means no more room for growth.

Re: Ask HN: Has social media reached its saturation point?

#52

Post by GLGirty »

hilbert42 wrote: post #30
adrianmonk wrote: post #24

Maybe, but it's hard to say because some of social media is trend-based. People want to connect to each other, but they also want novelty in how they do it. After they get bored writing on each other's walls, they want to try writing 160-character quips for public consumption. And when they get bored of that, they want to try taking photos and sharing them. And when they get bored of that, they want to try trading sh…

OK, given you're correct then how do people's lives compare now with those in the past in the pre-social media days? We shouldn't forget that for all of history until the recent advent of social media individuals had to 'connect' in different ways and that they were somehow successful in doing so—or civilization/society wouldn't exist. In the past, novelty wasn't much of an option as people had very limited choices w…

I suspect that the geographical limits of pre-internet "social platforms" was what filtered out the toxicity we observe now.

If your social club was a dance hall or book club or garden society or union pub, your interactions were limited to people within an hour of travel time or so. That's such a TINY sample of people that fringe beliefs and behaviors were always recognized as marginalia and tended to stay there.

This was a double edge sword.... queer kids in small towns were trapped in the closet, but no one thought contrails were dispersing mind altering drugs.

Social reach may be a cursed problem. It's not obvious how to create a platform that will be safe for, e.g. trans people in socially conservative towns, but prevent it from also sheltering nazi sympathizers. Relying on self policing by the platforms has resulted in problems and dangers we still haven't addressed.

Re: Ask HN: Has social media reached its saturation point?

#53

Post by CrimsonCape »

beej71 wrote: post #20
tenebrisalietum wrote: post #8

It has to be at the saturation point for at least Facebook. Facebook is old news. Anyone who wants a Facebook account has one, anyone who wants to engage in the platform is already doing so. However the younger people understand now that posting things on public social media can have consequences, so things like Discord and Telegram are now going to be the future, and classic social media like Facebook is simply goin…

I'm older and have bailed on social media (I use it as a write-only broadcast medium). The posts there I want to see are lost in the manipulative noise. I'm in several small clique channels on discord and slack, including one for my extended family, instead. I've been wondering how common these are getting.

I think that girls are particularly susceptible to self-criticism like "Wow, I have a phone but nobody calls me, harumph, I guess they don't like me / I guess I'm not worth anything to anybody."

Discords are a kind of panacea to these kinds of self-harmful thoughts, since joining a Discord says "Hey I want to talk" and now the burden is on the other participants; if they are not in the Discord, clearly they don't want to talk.

Re: Ask HN: Has social media reached its saturation point?

#54

Post by nradov »

thenerdhead wrote: post #50
nradov wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The remaining 40% of the world is impoverished, or elderly. They aren't going to pay for social media access and are nearly worthless to advertisers. The total addressable market for social media will grow only slowly now. New platforms will contine to arise, but they will mostly succeed by taking market share from existing services rather than expanding the market.

While ads may generate money today, the future looks a bit more bleak with “play to earn” concepts that these giants would still benefit from.

Play to earn is a scam, similar to Ponzi schemes. It only appears to work as long as gullible suckers keep putting in money. A sucker is born every minute, but (morality aside) companies still can't build a sustainable business model out of scamming them. Eventually they either run out of money, or catch on to the scam. Governments in some countries will probably also ban or restrict such schemes, thus making it difficult for them to operate within the legitimate economy.

Re: Ask HN: Has social media reached its saturation point?

#55

Post by nunorbatista »

Platforms such as Facebook are great aggregators of generic information, but are not very customisable when you want to discuss specific topics i.e. when people want to talk about cars, Twitter or Instagram are limited to comments when in fact you might want to have more features to generate interaction. They also don’t want to discuss it in the same place as their uncle.

I believe this is the point we are now: a lot of people have now discovered the positives of discussing with people alike and are searching for places where they have more of their kind. This is why Reddit, Twitch or Discord are growing strongly, unlike Facebook.

While more and more people are still joining the platforms, the future will bring other smaller places for niches. Social Media is not saturated, it’s fragmented.

Re: Ask HN: Has social media reached its saturation point?

#56

Post by thenerdhead »

nradov wrote: post #54
thenerdhead wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While ads may generate money today, the future looks a bit more bleak with “play to earn” concepts that these giants would still benefit from.

Play to earn is a scam, similar to Ponzi schemes. It only appears to work as long as gullible suckers keep putting in money. A sucker is born every minute, but (morality aside) companies still can't build a sustainable business model out of scamming them. Eventually they either run out of money, or catch on to the scam. Governments in some countries will probably also ban or restrict such schemes, thus making it diff…

Sure the NFT idea might be, but play to earn has existed in many online worlds for decades. If someone can make a living inside a virtual world, they can survive. It’s only going to get more popularized given big tech is hardly regulated.

Re: Ask HN: Has social media reached its saturation point?

#57

Post by jeffwask »

8organicbits wrote: post #47
I_DRINK_KOOLAID wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is not a pie getting bigger. It's always the same pie, only the size of each serve as well as the number of serve which changes . That's at least the intuition I get it from the famous phrase "2 ways of making money: bundle or unbundle" that you mentioned. When govt. broke up Standard Oil the pie of oil extraction didn't become bigger, it was just partitioned in a different way.

Consolidated communities like Facebook derived huge value because of network effects: everyone you want to talk to already has an account. Smaller communities derive value from addressing the unique needs of their users, better moderation, the unique audience is the value. Each of those communities in aggregate may be more valuable than the previous, one-size fits all mega-network. I'd expect (or maybe hope for) a st…

I fear that in the current incarnation of capitalism where everything is about constant growth, stability is an impossible state.

Re: Ask HN: Has social media reached its saturation point?

#58

Post by jeffwask »

I_DRINK_KOOLAID wrote: post #38
bko wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why would he buy Twitter? No one thinks its going to be a good investment. It was kind of a prerequisite to have shareholders agree to the purchase. There's no conceivable reason for him to spend his time, effort and money in buying twitter apart from his stated purpose. He's going to lose money and time on it. And its a stretch to think his personal wealth or companies will benefit from Musk owning Twitter. So if…

Musk got to #1 in the Forbes 400 by saying things to people on twitter and becoming a techno-utopian cult figure This is like Kim Kardashian buying E! to make sure they can never cancel "Keeping up with the Kardashians". Musk wants to keep rolling his promises into the future in order to avoid people asking them about practical and tangible results in the present, as they have been underwhelming to say the least when…

"Musk got to #1 in the Forbes 400 by saying things to people on twitter "

And funding armies of bots to say nice things about him and his companies... which is an interesting juxtaposition to any free speech agreement. In it's purest form banning bots, fake posts, etc. could be categorized as limiting speech.

Re: Ask HN: Has social media reached its saturation point?

#59

Post by thfuran »

I_DRINK_KOOLAID wrote: post #5
thfuran wrote: post #3

I think there's plenty of room for improvement in social media. At this point, it's all geared toward maximizing ad revenue, which is not closely aligned with maximizing utility for users.

> At this point, it's all geared toward maximizing ad revenue Well, you have to make money somehow and users will never pay for social media after having been spoiled for 15+ years by free Facebook , not to mention the 20+ years of free Google. When I paid for Linkedin Gold I felt scammed and canceled after a month. People are not willing to pay for marginal improvements, they are only willing to pay for very importa…

I agree that it's difficult to unwind the expectation of free (ad-supported) services and difficult for paid alternatives to compete. I really hope we can eventually entirely or nearly entirely do away with that entire ecosystem though. But I don't really see that happening any time soon.

Re: Ask HN: Has social media reached its saturation point?

#60

Post by julianlam »

nunorbatista wrote: post #55

Platforms such as Facebook are great aggregators of generic information, but are not very customisable when you want to discuss specific topics i.e. when people want to talk about cars, Twitter or Instagram are limited to comments when in fact you might want to have more features to generate interaction. They also don’t want to discuss it in the same place as their uncle. I believe this is the point we are now: a lot…

Facebook is definitely NOT a great aggregator of information.

Trying to see surface something from years ago is damn near impossible.

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