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Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

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Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#181

Post by chillacy »

rhacker wrote: post #61

I HAD to sign up for an account - don't ask why. After about 1 hour of usage trying to do what I had to get done, it REQUIRED a phone number for security purposes. Seconds after I entered the phone number (for security purposes) I was blasted by about 400 recommended connections including some ex-girlfriends that I'm sure my wife would LOVE me to be friends with. Go facebook. I'm guessing those people got notified th…

Oh it's 2018, being friends with all of your exes is just the norm, so you can constantly live in the past, never letting go..

Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#182

Post by gaius »

greenhouse_gas wrote: post #112
jasode wrote: post #15

Facebook suffered from 2 waves of "Eternal September" [0]: wave 1: the addition of everybody outside your immediate friends and close family. You get the goofy uncle, the distant high school acquaintances, and all the work acquaintances from every previous job that submitted a "friend request" that you didn't reject out of politeness. The newsfeed gets polluted by nonsense such as forwarded memes, politics, and other…

What I don't understand is what is FB thinking? Look at it this way: What do I want to see? Friend's image/text > Group image/text > Pages I like image/text > Friends of Friends image/text > Memes > Ads. What does FB want me to see? Ads > Doesn't matter. So what do they do? Ads > Memes > Friends of Friends image/video Pages/Group Image/Video > Friends Image/Video ------------------> Text. Why? What financial incentiv…

What financial incentive do they have to show me Memes over what I want to see?

Because you scroll and scroll and scroll through the feed looking for something you actually wanted to see, and all that extra time spent is "engagement".

Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#183

Post by remir »

etrautmann wrote: post #92

For all of those people saying that FB is dead, perhaps their core product is in decline among younger users, but that does not seem to be true for Instagram or Whatsapp. Those acquisitions seem to extend FB's fingers to the demographics that their core product is losing.

I guess the next question is; how long until both Instagram and Whatsapp alienate their users and they switch to the "next big thing"?

Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#184

Post by agorabinary »

jasode wrote: post #15

Facebook suffered from 2 waves of "Eternal September" [0]: wave 1: the addition of everybody outside your immediate friends and close family. You get the goofy uncle, the distant high school acquaintances, and all the work acquaintances from every previous job that submitted a "friend request" that you didn't reject out of politeness. The newsfeed gets polluted by nonsense such as forwarded memes, politics, and other…

We need a social network experience where users own their data, and are presented with a simple and user friendly interface that connects this data with their chosen friends. Currently we have user data mined en masse at great privacy risk and for endless profit, ad infinitum.

Facebook has not decayed because of an influx of new users beginning with this "eternal september", but because of the pointed decisions by its leadership to choose greed over respect for its users. The paramount decision is the decision to go public, necessitating indefinite growth at any cost in order to satisfy investors. It must have been obvious to Facebook's early employees that a Facebook at the behest of investors would increasingly dilute the user experience, and yet only now do they lament what they created.

Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#185

Post by djsumdog »

agorabinary wrote: post #184
jasode wrote: post #15

Facebook suffered from 2 waves of "Eternal September" [0]: wave 1: the addition of everybody outside your immediate friends and close family. You get the goofy uncle, the distant high school acquaintances, and all the work acquaintances from every previous job that submitted a "friend request" that you didn't reject out of politeness. The newsfeed gets polluted by nonsense such as forwarded memes, politics, and other…

We need a social network experience where users own their data, and are presented with a simple and user friendly interface that connects this data with their chosen friends. Currently we have user data mined en masse at great privacy risk and for endless profit, ad infinitum. Facebook has not decayed because of an influx of new users beginning with this "eternal september", but because of the pointed decisions by it…

Are you running your own Masterdon server yet? I'm working on migrating my blocks to a new docker structure and hope to have mine up this month.

It starts with people like us, in tech, running our own services and connecting with friends or even strangers in our field and growing out from there.

I don't think any one big thing can (or should) replace Facebook. The future of the Internet needs to be diverse and distributed. People need to learn about RSS feeds again and posting their content to a variety of services or hosting it themselves (if they know how).

Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#187

Post by jliptzin »

jonmb wrote: post #178
jliptzin wrote: post #32

Started using FB in 2004 when there were barely a few hundred thousand users. It was great as a college freshman going to a new place not knowing anyone and needing to make friends fast and keep up. In my 30s now and have almost completely stopped using facebook. I check in once every few months, usually when I need to sign in because someone messages me there instead of email. It's actually stunning to me that Faceb…

> I check in once every few months, usually when I need to sign in because someone messages me there instead of email. From what I've been hearing from internal teams, Facebook is hoping to take some of email's pie. I expect to see them pushing more people to use Facebook Messenger in place of email. And they're working on new types of ads that interface more with the Messenger. E.g. start a conversation with a compa…

Facebook is perhaps the last company I would trust with my email.

Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#188

Post by gaius »

padobson wrote: post #38

Whenever I see a post like this on HN, I see the inevitable "the product sucks" posts in the comments. As an engineer and social media user, I completely agree, but it doesn't seem to be bearing out in the marketplace. Facebook continues to grow[0] (if more slowly). So what is the HN audience to Facebook? Our we taste makers? A demographic ahead of the product curve, predictive of Facebook's imminent decline? Or are…

A demographic ahead of the product curve, predictive of Facebook's imminent decline?

I was a FB user when it was still closed to the general public (using my alumni email address) so yes, I would say that I/we are that demographic.

What I see is: everyone is moving to private, carefully curated groups on WhatsApp, where sharing outside the group will get you instantly ostracised.

Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#189

Post by cortesoft »

opportune wrote: post #116
ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar experience, I think my problem with the algorithm is similar to slowing down to look at the car wreck on the side of the road. I have a few a"friends" that post horrible stuff. Conspiracy theories, rants, and other posts that are just symptoms of poor mental health. At first I stopped to read these in HORROR and disgust, because they stood out so much from the rest of my feed. Facebook takes that as a signal…

Facebook's algorithm almost seems like a quintessential example of why you need to choose good metrics in optimization problems. Maximizing user engagement sounds great - it means people are using your website and enjoying it more, right? Turns out people weren't enjoying it more, they were using it more because Facebook was shoving controversial content (e.g. dubious-quality news, debates, crazy people) down people'…

But they get paid per eyeball, not by the enjoyment level of the people using the system. They don't care WHY you can't keep your eyes away, as long as you can't keep your eyes away.

From their end, their metric was perfect.

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