Snap’s Drop in Active Users Could Signal a Social Media Peak • Hacker News Board

Re: Snap’s Drop in Active Users Could Signal a Social Media Peak

#161

Post by shawn » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 6:43 AM UTC

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #138

shawn wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good idea; I tried that. Unfortunately IPFS doesn't yet seem reliable. Or at least I couldn't get it to work very well. I'll try again though. Wanna collab? Shoot me an email and we can work it out. I'm really interested in getting this concept running. If only IPFS were low latency and easy for average gamers to upload files to, that seems a perfect fit. I was hoping that as users play games, they would also upload…

IPFS definitely has high latency, but you might be able to combine this with the Web Storage API [1] to compress and then store the ROM data for local use. I'd be interested in a collab, is your email in your profile? 1: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Storage

Yeah! We're thinking along the same lines. I think with a bit of work, libretro can be modified to do it: https://github.com/libretro/parallel-n64

It's already been ported to the web. https://medium.com/webmr/n64-vr-with-javascript-e188de42ced5

The trouble is performance. N64 emulation is all software rasterization based, but it can be rewritten to use WebGL. It's just a lot of work that no one's done yet. RetroArch runs at 40fps because it can use SSE ops, which is beyond what browsers can do currently.

I think it would be possible to ship an Electron app with a local build of Retroarch, modified to export the rom's game data and selectively replace the draw calls with other ones. That way you can basically swap out starfox with mario, if you wanted. If any of this sounds interesting, shoot me an email (see profile).

Re: Snap’s Drop in Active Users Could Signal a Social Media Peak

#162

Post by mrweasel » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 6:44 AM UTC

drb91 wrote: post #17

ngngngng wrote: post #11

To me Snapchat is just instagram with a shit user interface that I don't have the time to learn.

Well, if you're using anything with ads, expect the experience to suck.

I've never seen a single ad on Snapchat. Where do they even show up?

Re: Snap’s Drop in Active Users Could Signal a Social Media Peak

#163

Post by kennxfl » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 6:45 AM UTC

willio58 wrote: post #19

paxy wrote: post #8

Seems like just a Snap peak to me. Article doesn't mention Instagram, its most direct competitor, or tons of other non-Facebook/Twitter social networks that are gaining popularity (Reddit, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitch, even WhatsApp, and many country-specific ones).

As a long time Snapchat user i know my friends at this point like Instagram more. Snapchat’s recent interface changes make little sense and sometimes serve to actively confuse the user experience. Classic case of fixing something that wasn’t broken.

I think the confusing user experience serves to engage younger audiences who gravitate to what is regarded by the older users as complicated. I believe this is Snapchat's unique approach vs all the other social media.

Re: Snap’s Drop in Active Users Could Signal a Social Media Peak

#164

Post by XenophileJKO » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 6:49 AM UTC

terryf wrote: post #151

quotemstr wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chronological is just one ordering. Why are you so attached to it? Why must deviating from this one specific ranking approach lead to "chaos"? Algorithmic ranking is not evil. A tiny minority of people rail against algorithmic ranking, but the vast majority, as demonstrated by their engagement , prefer the algorithmic model. Should we let this tiny vocal minority dictate policy, data be damned?

"As demonstrated by engagement" - isn't really true. It's more "As demonstrated by count of time spent in the app". I believe that is true. But it's also a worse experience. Those two really seem to contradict each other, however, it's really quite nuanced. I'd like to see mostly what my friends are up to. Instead of that, on Facebook at least, I mostly see viral videos from whatever groups I happen to be in. It is t…

I realized a while ago that "engagement" is very much the wrong metric to optimize. The reason people optimize for "time spent" or "number of interactions" is because it is easy to measure.

I think ultimately what you need to optimize for is much harder to measure. I think for most senarios it is "value a user can recieve for a given amount of time". When measuring this, time spent in the application is acutally detrimental unless you are increasing the value a user is getting from the application by a substantial amount.

Re: Snap’s Drop in Active Users Could Signal a Social Media Peak

#165

Post by hrrsn » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 6:55 AM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #160

dkrich wrote: post #115

How did this article make the New York Times? It’s awful. I listened to the entire Snap conference call and Spiegel directly attributed the drop in active users to the app redesign, a fact that wasn’t mentioned until 2/3 of the way through the article. Moreover, they gave no guidance for DAU projections, and merely said that historically fewer users are active in the third quarter than the second. This does not equat…

>Spiegel directly attributed the drop in active users to the app redesign I wouldn't be surprised. Navigation is all over the place in Snapshot. Try sending a snap, and now I'm suddenly view stories from people I don't know, with no clear way of getting out. I can see some users jut giving up on using the app.

Just anecdotally, most of my friends stopped using Snapchat after the horrific redesign and moved to Instagram stories. Can't say I blame them

Re: Snap’s Drop in Active Users Could Signal a Social Media Peak

#166

Post by glalonde » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 6:55 AM UTC

scarejunba wrote: post #51

whalesalad wrote: post #49

Users are jumping ship to Instagram. Once they duplicated the functionality it was the nail in the coffin for snap. If I had a ton of cash lying around I’d short the stock to zero. Insta was Facebooks greatest acquisition.

Three thousand dollars will get you options until 2020 that you can cash in for $50k worth. You don't need a ton of cash if you think they're going to zero.

hold up, how does that figure? I thought you could only get up to the amount invested back, which is why it is a really not great idea. Investing $3k now might net you up to $3k if the stock hits 0, but it could triple in which case you lose $6k.

Bounded upside, infinite downside. I'm sure it's more complicated but what am I missing?

Re: Snap’s Drop in Active Users Could Signal a Social Media Peak

#167

Post by dangero » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 6:57 AM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #7

We might be at a local maximum, but we're nowhere near the peak. What we're seeing is an end of the race to the bottom. What's happened is that most of the major social networks only hire and promote people who make decisions primarily based on analytics. As a result these sites no longer have any real communities or organic content, and have been completely hollowed out by math-friendly refrigerator magnet junkfood.…

I've noticed a similar effect with fast food restaurants. Fast food up-and-coming competitors tend to offer higher quality, fresher food at a slightly higher price. Problem is that when you look back at McDonald's 50 years ago, it had higher quality and fresher ingredients than it does today. Profit motive drove slow incremental decreases in quality till eventually new competitors could differentiate by offering a product probably somewhat similar to an original McDonald's burger.

Are we destined to see this same cycle with social media? Profit motive slowly degrades the platform privacy and feed quality till a new player can enter simply by offering something closer to the original product Facebook offered?

Re: Snap’s Drop in Active Users Could Signal a Social Media Peak

#168

Post by fwn » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 6:58 AM UTC

whytaka wrote: post #97

scarejunba wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three thousand dollars will get you options until 2020 that you can cash in for $50k worth. You don't need a ton of cash if you think they're going to zero.

How exactly do I do this?

Remember that even Myspace is still around. Betting zero is a radical act.

Re: Snap’s Drop in Active Users Could Signal a Social Media Peak

#169

Post by rebuilder » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 7:10 AM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #128

florabuzzword wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bailed at the advent of forced non-chronological timelines. I would have been less insulted if Facebook hired someone to spit in my face. Easily the scummiest design decision I have ever whitnessed. Actively manipulating the structural representation of time in a communication platform is begging for chaos. Yes, of course I know the time stamps are still presented. That is not my point. Communication is sensitive;…

Chronological is just one ordering. Why are you so attached to it? Why must deviating from this one specific ranking approach lead to "chaos"? Algorithmic ranking is not evil. A tiny minority of people rail against algorithmic ranking, but the vast majority, as demonstrated by their engagement , prefer the algorithmic model. Should we let this tiny vocal minority dictate policy, data be damned?

The biggest issue for me, when FB moved away from chronological ordering, was that if I clicked on a post in my feed, I could no longer go back to the feed and continue browsing where I left off, because the ordering appeared to change when the page was refreshed. I pretty much stopped using the service around that time, and though I didn't actually think about it, I think this change was a big factor in that.

Re: Snap’s Drop in Active Users Could Signal a Social Media Peak

#170

Post by rblion » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 7:11 AM UTC

I'm one of them. I deactivated my Facebook in January too.

I use Twitter for 5-10 minutes a day to keep up with a few topics of interest.

Instagram for 5-10 minutes a day to get some cool nature and travel photos, a few people I genuinely care about.

HN and Reddit keep in the loop for all the things I am interested in and allow me to discuss them anonymously with other people who are as into them as I am.

I just see my family and friends in person.