Could we be the problem? No, it's the users.
Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes
111–120 of 262 posts
Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Worse yet, do you know how frustrating it is to be told that there are no more updates available while you know that you a missing life events from friends that actually posted them. After a while you realize that there is no point in posting your own because they will similarly not show up for friends. Cutting back on FB has become ever easier over time.
My wife and were 'in a relationship' on Facebook within a few months of meeting each other. Then we were 'married'. Even still, for the first four or so years that we had each other on FB, it wouldn't show me her posts. They just weren't in my feed, I'd scroll down so far I was seeing content from months ago, but I'd never see anything she'd posted that week. Eventually it took me telling FB I didn't want to see post…
They've probably done testing and found that for some significant percentage of married couples, seeing their spouse's posts caused them to reduce their Facebook usage. So unhappy marriages are ruining it for everyone.
I feel like the general trend of UI simplification and a/b testing everything has companies chasing after anything that will push their general metrics up in the short term, at the expense of slowly disenfranchising a large portion of their users.
I interviewed at Netflix recently for a position on their UI team, and I questioned the interviewer about a lot of annoying aspects of the Netflix interface. He was aware of every complaint, and his explanation for every one of them was he wishes he could change it but the a/b testing shows they get higher engagement with it the way it is. So, for example, they show you movies you have already said you don't like, because enough people give a thumbs down and then later watch the movie. In the short term very few people are going to cancel Netflix because of this, but enough of these decisions in succession is erosive to customer goodwill.
Personally, these kind of decisions wouldn't bother me that much if apps and websites made it easy to customize your experience. Facebook makes it difficult by opaquely shaping your newsfeed and giving you what seems like hundreds of options across a half dozen settings pages. Netflix makes it difficult by just giving you practically no options, but there's enough demand that's there a tiny industry in just making websites and plugins to make Netflix usable.
Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
My wife and were 'in a relationship' on Facebook within a few months of meeting each other. Then we were 'married'. Even still, for the first four or so years that we had each other on FB, it wouldn't show me her posts. They just weren't in my feed, I'd scroll down so far I was seeing content from months ago, but I'd never see anything she'd posted that week. Eventually it took me telling FB I didn't want to see post…
They've probably done testing and found that for some significant percentage of married couples, seeing their spouse's posts caused them to reduce their Facebook usage. So unhappy marriages are ruining it for everyone. I feel like the general trend of UI simplification and a/b testing everything has companies chasing after anything that will push their general metrics up in the short term, at the expense of slowly di…
yes, a/b testing optimizes for an average user that dosent exist, and everyone is unhappy with.
Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
My wife and were 'in a relationship' on Facebook within a few months of meeting each other. Then we were 'married'. Even still, for the first four or so years that we had each other on FB, it wouldn't show me her posts. They just weren't in my feed, I'd scroll down so far I was seeing content from months ago, but I'd never see anything she'd posted that week. Eventually it took me telling FB I didn't want to see post…
They've probably done testing and found that for some significant percentage of married couples, seeing their spouse's posts caused them to reduce their Facebook usage. So unhappy marriages are ruining it for everyone. I feel like the general trend of UI simplification and a/b testing everything has companies chasing after anything that will push their general metrics up in the short term, at the expense of slowly di…
I guess A/B testing will tell you if the horse will become faster if you change from iron shoes to carbon fiber ones.
A/B testing won’t ever get you a Tesla from a horse.
Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Television programming has been profiled and targeted for decades. It just wasn't as granular and accurate as it is on the web.
While true, that kind of understatement seems calculated to miss the point. FB is targeting the individual, tv targeted entire demographics. It is a poor comparison.
Counterpoint: I'd rather see Ads about things I'm interested in than things I'm not interested in. So by that metric, Facebook is far better than generic Ads I see on TV.
Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
While true, that kind of understatement seems calculated to miss the point. FB is targeting the individual, tv targeted entire demographics. It is a poor comparison.
Counterpoint: I'd rather see Ads about things I'm interested in than things I'm not interested in. So by that metric, Facebook is far better than generic Ads I see on TV.
That’s a non sequitor, not a counterpoint to the matter of how manipulative and effective from the POV of the advertiser ads are today vs on tv.
Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes
#117> "We made changes to show fewer viral videos to make sure people's time is well spent. In total, we made changes that reduced time spent on Facebook by roughly 50 million hours every day."
Weren't the changes to the news feed just announced? This sounds like spin. They planned all along for people to stop using our service. Right.
Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes
#118It seems like nobody at Facebook is allowed to play the long game.
In the long game, quality wins. In the long game, an organization that puts quality of information at top priority persists and becomes a long-lived resource for civilization.
Like Google has become a persistent Web search resource, setting aside its short-lived ancillary forays into more clickable, trivial services.
So long as Facebook prioritizes viral clickbait, so long will it be in danger of collapse, irrelevance, and extinction. That's ok with me.
Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
They've probably done testing and found that for some significant percentage of married couples, seeing their spouse's posts caused them to reduce their Facebook usage. So unhappy marriages are ruining it for everyone. I feel like the general trend of UI simplification and a/b testing everything has companies chasing after anything that will push their general metrics up in the short term, at the expense of slowly di…
yes, a/b testing optimizes for an average user that dosent exist, and everyone is unhappy with.
Reminds me of the old tale of the man who drowned in a lake with an average depth of 3 feet.
Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes
#120Good.
The less people use Facebook, the better and healthier society becomes.