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Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

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Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

#121

Post by gatmne »

nojvek wrote: post #114
TipVFL wrote: post #112

Earlier 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…

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.

It will also tell you that pumping horses full of steroids will make them go faster. Tech's absurd obsession with metrics and statistics will be their undoing.

Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

#122

Post by 111_1_111 »

istorical wrote: post #17

Respect for journalism is as much about avoiding headlines like this that sneakily imply some sort of baseless causation via - in this case - the word "After" as it is about bad science in Fox News coverage of global warming. When we let poor journalism like this headline go uncontested we erode public trust.

This is all journalism. Have you read the washington post recently? Every single headline is misleading.

Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

#123

Post by jsemrau »

underwater wrote: post #60
jsemrau wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a company page/account where I daily automatically post updates. I guess that counts into this number.

Pages are not counted as a user in their DAU counts.

Sure, but there is a user who is the admin for the page. This "admin" is entirely a bot.

Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

#124

Post by splintercell »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #78

I didn’t see anyone else mention this, but to me it is a problem of facebook’s own making. They drove personal content off the site when they pushed videos and pictures by “viral marketing” firms onto it. They replaced groups (inherently personal) with pages, then scrambled to try and bring groups back years later. They turned the wall to spam from various garbage apps that were given permission to crap all over it b…

> Once phones became nicer to use and there were alternatives to the lag and limitations of SMS, people had no reason to log into Facebook to chat with their friends because Facebook has trained non-IMers to IM and they no longer needed Facebook to do it.

It's funny, because of Facebook Messenger, I have completely moved off SMS and now use Facebook Messenger for all my communication. The only reason why I use SMS is that I Am not connected to that person on Facebook (and probably wouldn't).

Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

#125

Post by username223 »

btilly wrote: post #84
ComputerGuru wrote: post #78

I didn’t see anyone else mention this, but to me it is a problem of facebook’s own making. They drove personal content off the site when they pushed videos and pictures by “viral marketing” firms onto it. They replaced groups (inherently personal) with pages, then scrambled to try and bring groups back years later. They turned the wall to spam from various garbage apps that were given permission to crap all over it b…

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.

> 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.

Or trying to find something you saw in your feed, which then disappeared for no obvious reason. I can't decide whether I'm a pigeon in a Skinner box run by humans, or a human in one run by pigeons, but either way, the experience is unpleasant.

Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

#126

Post by [deleted] »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #78

I didn’t see anyone else mention this, but to me it is a problem of facebook’s own making. They drove personal content off the site when they pushed videos and pictures by “viral marketing” firms onto it. They replaced groups (inherently personal) with pages, then scrambled to try and bring groups back years later. They turned the wall to spam from various garbage apps that were given permission to crap all over it b…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

#127

Post by tomc1985 »

firasd wrote: post #33

From my readings, something Facebook has been struggling with for a couple years is getting people to post more personal updates. Thus their Newsfeed changes de-prioritizing articles, and thus (I figure) their experiments such as showing short posts in large font sizes, and enabling MySpace-like gradient backgrounds on text posts... This dynamic makes me recall something: Anyone remember how back in the day (like 200…

I think that was because at the time we all probably had far fewer friends on FB. As my friend count has grown over time (and really it isn't even that much compared to most) I have felt less and less inclined to broadcast my life to a bunch of people that I know only tangentially. In a way it encourages me to actually hang out with my real friends, since their updates are so buried and I rarely post anything besides politics and links.

Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

#128

Post by jokermatt999 »

Am I the only one who views Facebook by Most Recent? They don't make it easy, and I don't think you can default to it, but I just point all my bookmarks to https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr

Still though, Facebook could be so much better. The problem is that a profit-driven social media site is always going to have different goals than its users. Free ones seem to never gain traction. Currently, most of my friend groups are switching to Discord, but that's basically just going back to IRC without having to understand NickServ and such.

As many others have pointed out though, Facebook got bland when everyone's parents joined. Private groups somewhat help, but it really does need to be more directly baked in to the design. It's far too late for that now, but I dream one day someone will finally make the Facebook killer. Until then, I use Facebook, because it benefits me more than not using it. Shallow interaction, peoples kids, etc? That can easily be fixed. For me, the boost in mood I get from reconnecting to old friends makes it worth all the pain. I was a hold out too, and didn't join until ~5 years ago?

I think the problem is it's almost a utility at this point. Most everyone I know (non-techy crowd) is on it. If you aren't, you truly do miss out, which sucks. But do you know anyone who doesn't work, or want to work at Facebook who would say "I love Facebook!" Tweak all you want, but it's too much a behemoth to love.

Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

#129

Post by mygo »

nojvek wrote: post #114
TipVFL wrote: post #112

Earlier 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…

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.

If you do enough binary switching, you eventually will get a Tesla. Assuming a Tesla is optimal. Let’s test to find out.

How do you think the eyeball arose from unicellular eukaryotes?

Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

#130

Post by robryan »

nikanj wrote: post #71
firasd wrote: post #33

From my readings, something Facebook has been struggling with for a couple years is getting people to post more personal updates. Thus their Newsfeed changes de-prioritizing articles, and thus (I figure) their experiments such as showing short posts in large font sizes, and enabling MySpace-like gradient backgrounds on text posts... This dynamic makes me recall something: Anyone remember how back in the day (like 200…

Posting anything deeper than dank memes & news seems futile, when The Algorithm decides who can see your post. If they want people to make better content, they need to start figuring out why people feel like their better content gets no audience.

Ideally everyone on your friends list would see your post. If they no longer care for them they can either unfriend or hide your posts.
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