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Daily Facebook users drops for the first time in US

cnbc.com

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Re: Daily Facebook users drops for the first time in US

#31

Post by Libturd »

vuldin wrote: post #7

Anecdotally, I haven't been on Facebook in months. In spite of that, I wouldn't be surprised if my account is counted somehow in the daily usage for some of those days just because of the extent to which their services have extended throughout many other websites. I've joined, canceled, then joined again, but never really used the site to any large extent. It is a very unnatural (yet at times necessary) way to commun…

why is it "necessary" to communicate? give them your email/phone number and tell them to fuck off otherwise.

Re: Daily Facebook users drops for the first time in US

#32

Post by Outpox »

DiThi wrote: post #25
minor3rd wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... .000005% of the population?

Change and growth must start somewhere. I've used DDG for years but only recently I started recommending it to everybody, and endorsing Firefox as well.

Same here, ditched Chrome for Firefox and Chromium, and Google Search for DDG. Altough I don't see how I could stop using Android, maps, youtube and gmail :-/

Re: Daily Facebook users drops for the first time in US

#33

Post by InclinedPlane »

kristianc wrote: post #30
cx_in_the_chat wrote: post #11

I wonder when the next "facebook" will come along. I predict people will abandon facebook just as they did with myspace, as soon as something new, cleaner and with less spam will be available to migrate to. Of course after some period of time the new service will also end up filled with memes and ads and the cycle will continue once again.

The MySpace comparison is a little tired. MySpace felt big, but even at its peak, only had 75m MAUs. Even Pinterest today has over twice as many, between 175m and 200m. Facebook is at 2.2bn, and its DAILY active users are 184m. Extrapolated over a month, this blip accounts for half of MySpace's MAUs. There's some pretty serious network effects there, to the point where building a slightly better mousetrap is not goin…

Network effect isn't that relevant since people don't actually have a ton invested in Facebook beyond just the social graph and that social connectivity. It is thus rife for a preference cascade if it turns out a competitor hits all the right buttons with some other compelling reason to switch. All it really takes is for a competitor to be actually superior on the merits (so, not something like google plus that was mostly the same and in many ways actually worse) and then a critical mass to start forming there. Once the "well, I guess I should have an account over there just to keep up with my friends X, Y, and Z every once in a while" cycle starts and that becomes common then a preference cascade becomes possible. Nobody really understands social media very well today, which is odd considering its age, so nobody is really hitting all the right notes with an offering but the potential exists.

Re: Daily Facebook users drops for the first time in US

#35

Post by fwdpropaganda »

Outpox wrote: post #32
DiThi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Change and growth must start somewhere. I've used DDG for years but only recently I started recommending it to everybody, and endorsing Firefox as well.

Same here, ditched Chrome for Firefox and Chromium, and Google Search for DDG. Altough I don't see how I could stop using Android, maps, youtube and gmail :-/

I'm in the exact same spot. Android can be ditched for LineageOS. Gmail is risky because of security; using anything else is a big gamble. Maps is also irreplaceable right now, but over time competitors will get better.

You should ditch Chromium as well.

Re: Daily Facebook users drops for the first time in US

#36

Post by kristianc »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #33
kristianc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MySpace comparison is a little tired. MySpace felt big, but even at its peak, only had 75m MAUs. Even Pinterest today has over twice as many, between 175m and 200m. Facebook is at 2.2bn, and its DAILY active users are 184m. Extrapolated over a month, this blip accounts for half of MySpace's MAUs. There's some pretty serious network effects there, to the point where building a slightly better mousetrap is not goin…

Network effect isn't that relevant since people don't actually have a ton invested in Facebook beyond just the social graph and that social connectivity. It is thus rife for a preference cascade if it turns out a competitor hits all the right buttons with some other compelling reason to switch. All it really takes is for a competitor to be actually superior on the merits (so, not something like google plus that was m…

The social graph and the social connectivity is huge. You're asking people - 2.2bn of them - to incur the overhead of another platform to check, which they're not going to do unless all of their friends are already on that platform in the first place.

And those people (and the advertisers that pay for the servers, the hosting) are not going to turn up unless ... well you get the picture. And the reason why advertisers pay to advertise on Facebook is because of the strength of their social graph in identifying people's preferences and profile of device usage, which Facebook has because they already have all the users.

Facebook is already 'good enough' in so many areas, and for the areas that the core FB app is not so strong (visuals, low friction messaging, short form communication), guess what, Facebook has already bought a competitor.

Re: Daily Facebook users drops for the first time in US

#37

Post by Asdfbla »

simias wrote: post #10

I see many people clamoring for the death of Facebook but don't they own many of the up-and-coming social networks anyway? If people are ditching Facebook for Instagram you might as well switch to cocaine to stop your crack addiction.

I wonder how monetization of users compares for those alternative platforms though. Instagram seems to be okay, since you can insert ads and probably deduce user profiles for targeted ads pretty easily from who they follow. Even image analysis for marketable things in the pictures to show relevant ads for is surely possible.

WhatsApp on the other hand seems much harder to make money with.

In both cases though, I guess the good thing is that it's a step back from the all-encompassing and creepy global social network Zuckerberg had in mind for Facebook. Instagram and WhatsApp seem more moderate in scope in comparison.

Re: Daily Facebook users drops for the first time in US

#38

Post by saiya-jin »

thejosh wrote: post #23
golergka wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chats. Most of my friends and me have most of our social interactions in private chat groups, with silly pictures and pictures, personal stories and drama happening all the time. I've tried most of the big ones (except WeChat and other chinese apps, where I don't have a single peer), and I bet on Telegram. They're moving forward with incredible speed, and from all the competitors, they seem to understand their audien…

Only reason I use FB is chat as well, simply because friends and family still use it. Only reason I still have a FB account and not simply a messenger account is spotify is tied to it and I can't unlink from FB as the login source..

Have the same issue with airbnb, stupidly created the account via facebook credentials, tried to migrate it to proper standalone user later, airbnb support claimed they can't do it due to technical constraints, I would have to close the account and create a new one.

No problem if you're the traveler, but if you're the host, losing hard-built reputation would be a short term disaster... for a effin' login.

Re: Daily Facebook users drops for the first time in US

#39

Post by carlmr »

nukeop wrote: post #26

Facebook has recently hit 2 billion total users. Given that we have somewhere around 7 billion people on the planet, this seems to be the unbeatable ceiling. Let's estimate generously that half of the world's population has access to internet. That gives us 3.5 billion people. Around 750 million of these people are Chinese - they don't, and can't use Facebook. This leaves us with 2,750,000 people - many of which won'…

For media what they measure their growth in is total time (attention) spent on the platform. Even with 2 billion people signed up being the growth ceiling in terms of number of people. We need to see whether they manage to increase (# people) * (average time spent on Facebook). That number still has a huge upward potential. Declining number of daily visitors is a sign that this growth is negative too though.

I don't think that messengers can really replace social media. I don't spend time on a messenger if I'm not messaging someone. Facebook is more about posting something you find interesting, and consuming what other people post (+ adds interspersed). This is a completely different market. Will something replace Facebook? Surely, at some point. But I don't think it will be messengers. It will be another service that makes people feel like they get more of the content they want from their friends.

Re: Daily Facebook users drops for the first time in US

#40

Post by taneq »

angusfretwell wrote: post #19
KasianFranks wrote: post #15

Facebook has always been the next AOL. In comparison, you'll rarely hear someone say "I'm leaving Google search". Social nets vs Search and Search still wins. This is why there's still a large difference in value between them in terms of revenue, users and algorithmic technology.

I am (trying to) leave Google search for Duck Duck Go. Many people I know are doing the same. Admittedly it is harder to leave Google search than Facebook.

What's keeping you? I switched my default search engine nearly a year ago and in large part I haven't really noticed. At first, occasionally I'd not find something I was looking for, and would switch to Google to see if I could find it. The number of times that I've found something on Google but not DDG in the past six months would be low single digits.
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