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Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

bradfrost.com

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Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#301

Post by pjmorris »

duderific wrote: post #161
penglish1 wrote: post #135

There probably should be a robot that responds about Facebook posts "you aren't the customer, you are the product." The article is pretty careful to use the term user - undoubtedly we are users. But here is the problematic statement: "This is what happens when the metric of how much time users spend using your thing supersedes the goal of providing legitimate value to your users." The thing is - sure, the user time s…

I've always thought would be interesting to create a survey that would ask FB users: what is the maximum amount they would pay per month to use Facebook? What is it really worth to them? Or, would they continue to use it if it was $10/month? How about 50 cents?

Seems like one way to do that would be to offer opting out of ads, A/B testing for price. It'd let them find the balance between user-supported revenue and advertiser-supported revenue.

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#302

Post by OliverJones »

taylodl wrote: post #2

The best thing I ever did was delete the Facebook app from my phone. I had already disabled all the notifications, but that didn't change things like deleting the app. Not being able to get to Facebook wherever you are. As silly as it sounds it was liberating. I still access Facebook from my laptop - but now that it's off of my phone, I'm accessing Facebook less and less frequently and I'm find I'm happier as a resul…

No Facebook == even more happy.

I deleted my Facebook account completely last fall. It was interesting to see what happened over the period of about a month. Two weeks in my spouse's status changed from "Married to Ollie" to "Married." About three weeks in I got a notice saying my account to pay for "boosting" posts was cancelled.

My FB fanboy brother is annoyed, because if he wants to tell me something he has to make an effort.

People don't "tag" me in pictures any more. I don't have to cope with the little burst of emotional juice when somebody pushes the little thumb button on something from me or about me.

And, the fake nuz just stopped. Hooray.

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#303

Post by inv »

All the tactics described in the article fall into the category called "growth".

Facebook has specialized Growth teams that come up with features like that in order to move metrics such as retention, signups, active advertisers.

It's one of the reasons Facebook is so successful and the number of people using it daily keeps growing, as well as revenue and stock price.

I believe most tech companies have teams 100% focused on growth.

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#304

Post by KozmoNau7 »

newman8r wrote: post #277
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you handle a situation such as being at an event with friends, getting separated, and needing to find each other again? At concerts, I've found it hugely helpful to simple take a picture from where I'm standing, and sending it to my friends.

I haven't had to figure out anything like that in the last few years. I'm not very social - I hang out with friends a few times a month and usually just hack on stuff and drink a few beers. I've got lots of radios though, and I use them sometimes if I'm doing a convoy or camping, etc.

Ah, OK. For people with active social lives though, phones are pretty hard to go without.

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#305

Post by KozmoNau7 »

danielh wrote: post #274
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #262

I have no idea what I did, but I don't get any of that nonsense. I have all notifications turned off in the app, I've disabled all email except if someone explicitly mentions me by name in a discussion (I should probably switch off that one, too) and I've made an effort to hide all kinds of stupid apps and games and pages that are nothing but time wasters. I also only like and follow pages that I have a genuine inter…

Maybe they are collecting enough data about you that they don't feel the need to bother you. Are you signed in to Facebook in your primary browser? Do you have the mobile app running in the background? Since I've signed out of Facebook on my PC and kill the mobile Facebook app while not using it, I tend to get multiple push notifications per day, most of them asking if I know some random person. My girlfriend, who is…

Possibly. Or maybe whatever they have is so boring they can't be bothered to ask me for more. I share very little personal stuff on Facebook. Actually none at all, now that I think about it. Most of my profile is empty.

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#306

Post by snvzz »

1001101 wrote: post #93
bg4 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me: The best thing I ever did was delete the Facebook.

Even better, don't sign up. I'm envious of my friends who are in this category. I deleted after reading about PRISM, then got back on. Deleted again, and then moved away from some friends and got lonely and got back on again. Luckily more and more of my friends are deleting, so should be easier to take the plunge again.

Among the never signed up group. It was unappealing to begin with, and it's been increasingly unlikely as, with stories like this, I learn how much worse it's been getting.

I also find people who ask for my facebook account or try to get me to join are the same people I find least interesting and I'm less willing to spend my time with.

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#307

Post by simonswords82 »

vasilakisfil wrote: post #300

Facebook is just dying and they know that from their internal metrics long time now so these features have been developed to save the engagement because otherwise facebook's stock value will plange.

I was about to say exactly the same thing. This stinks of desperation on Facebook's part to keep their metrics swinging up and to the right. They are acutely aware that any levelling off in these metrics will have a knock on effect for their share price.

Whilst I don't use Facebook, and dislike the social impact that Facebook has brought about (acknowledging the amazing precedents Facebook has set too of course) I do wonder how they get around this. There are only so many humans on the planet that they can play these engagement tricks on. The number of new users and amount of engagement will have to level off at some point.

I'd love to hear what Facebook plan to do to continue to "grow" in the the sense that shareholders are kept happy when they reach this saturation point.

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#308

Post by jventura »

scrumper wrote: post #67
taylodl wrote: post #2

The best thing I ever did was delete the Facebook app from my phone. I had already disabled all the notifications, but that didn't change things like deleting the app. Not being able to get to Facebook wherever you are. As silly as it sounds it was liberating. I still access Facebook from my laptop - but now that it's off of my phone, I'm accessing Facebook less and less frequently and I'm find I'm happier as a resul…

Yeah that works for a bit. I was "more happy" when I deleted it. Now, a year later, I'm just as sad because my wife is on it all the time, but I can't influence that. It's not like I can just delete her instance...

My girlfriend used to grab her phone and start scrolling the fb newsfeed while we were talking. As she knows that I've deleted my fb account, my trick was to gently remind her that we were in the middle of a talk, and although she may be able to do two things at the same time, I don't, and her using the phone is distracting to me and makes me break the flow of the conversation. Like Pavlov's dog, she is now so accustomed to that, that I don't really need to say anything anymore. I just look at her doing that, she understands and turns off the phone (well, most of the time at least).

Even if you aren't both in the middle of a conversation, I suggest to you to slowly start talking to her about all these shaddy things about facebook (important: is not an addiction but a mental conditioning, as "addiction" is a very strong word for some people and "conditioning" is a much fuzzier concept). Then, slowly, start noticing that her "conditioning" on facebook is a turnoff on certain situations. Be honest and frontal about that..

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#309

Post by thestephen »

I've recently received several friend requests a day from spambots. This is annoying, but I can just ignore the "friend request" tab and go on with my life.

However, as if it wasn't a nuisance enough, Facebook now gives me plain notifications of these friend requests in my normal notification feed. "Spambot is new to Facebook and just sent you a friend request."

I'd switch to only Messenger, but Facebook seems to think that I don't have Messenger, so I keep receiving invites to install Messenger from my friends as it covers half their conversation with me with that notification.

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#310

Post by mike-cardwell »

Although I'm not on Facebook anymore, I have the same problem with LinkedIn. To deal with it, I just add to my email sieve filter every so often. So far I have:

  ## Linkedin - Trash useless email
  if allof(
    address :is "From" "messages-noreply@linkedin.com",
    anyof(
      header :regex "Subject" "^(Congratulate|Say happy birthday to) .+",
      header :regex "Subject" "^Check out .+ (updated profile|new skill|new photo)",
      header :regex "Subject" ".+ is a?waiting (for )?your response$",
      header :regex "Subject" "^News about .+",
      header :regex "Subject" "ou have [0-9]+ (unread message|new update)",
      header :regex "Subject" "Do you know .+",
      header :regex "Subject" "^.+, you have .+waiting for you on LinkedIn$",
      header :regex "Subject" "see who you already know on LinkedIn$",
      header :regex "Subject" "^.+, more than [0-9,]+ new jobs in .+$",
      header :regex "Subject" "^Connect to your classmates from .+$"
    )
  ){
      addflag  "\\Seen";
      fileinto "Trash";
      stop;
  }
I'm sure you could do something similar for Facebook if you just switched to email notifications and stopped using the mobile apps.
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