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

nytimes.com

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

#181

Post by superflyguy »

blitmap wrote: post #103
benwerd wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. _Exactly_ this. Rather than understanding their users as real humans, having unique insights about them, and building…

I don't want to sound like an ass because I wholeheartedly agree with you. The experience is hollow. But you can't invest in things you can't quantify. You can't make money off of good vibes and authenticity without metrics. Snapchat and the like have thrown enormous money at understanding humans and have the best people in their fields to get this right. I think what worked 10 years ago no longer flies now. How we s…

"But you can't invest in things you can't quantify."

From:https://genius.com/Frank-zappa-drooling-midrange-accountants...

Once upon a time, a record company had A&R people in it who would take a chance, make a decision, use their gut reaction, sign a group, and see what they could do with it. Okay? That was, whoa, a long time ago. It's not that way anymore. All decisions about who get signed and what happens to the record are made by these drooling little midrange accountants. And everything is based on the numbers games in there. And the taste of the accountants is what is ruling the mass media."

Continues at link.

This attitude is like trying to predict the weather tomorrow by just guessing it'll be the same as today. You're right most of the time...

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

#182

Post by megablast »

mygo wrote: post #113
danepowell wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like an example of Goodhart's Law: "When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric." Optimizing for something as abstruse as "engagement" seems like a great way to completely ignore everything that actually makes social networks compelling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

they’re just optimizing for the wrong metric. If the metric was “user satisfaction” they could target it day and night and nobody would be complaining.

Does high user satisfaction make more money?

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

#183

Post by westpfelia »

fwn wrote: post #168
whytaka wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly do I do this?

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

Myspace was never itself a publically traded company. They had the backings of News Corp to not die.

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

#184

Post by function_seven »

Kiro wrote: post #171
josephg wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? I was listening to the Next Billion Seconds podcast the other day. They made the point that in social media 'engagement' is a polite euphemism for 'addictiveness'.…

Addictiveness isn't inherently a bad thing though. I'm addicted to working out.

It by definition is a bad thing. I suspect you’re using the term as slang. Like, you enjoy working out, you do it regularly, and you don’t feel right when you’ve gone too long without a bit of exercise.

That’s not addiction, that’s a healthy habit. If you were truly addicted to working out, you’d be late for work because you wanted that last mile. Or miss your kids birthday party to hang out at the CrossFit gym. It would consume your time and attention to the detriment of other needs and the needs of others.

That’s the spirit the parent comment is using the term in. As something that demands more of your attention than it deserves.

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

#185

Post by Stephen_C »

benwerd wrote: post #48
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.…

> 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. _Exactly_ this. Rather than understanding their users as real humans, having unique insights about them, and building…

Reminds me that the balance between logic and emotion within a sociological system was explored many moons ago in the Matrix trilogy through the relationship between the Architect(Logic) and Oracle(Intuition).

WARNING: Mild spoilers if you've not seen the Matrix films

The analytics led social media platforms are evolving towards the early versions of the Matrix created solely by the Architect and ultimately rejected by the humans within:

"The first Matrix I designed was quite naturally perfect, it was a work of art, flawless, sublime. A triumph equalled only by its monumental failure. The inevitability of its doom is apparent to me now as a consequence of the imperfection inherent in every human being.

Thus, I redesigned it based on your history to more accurately reflect the varying grotesqueries of your nature. However, I was again frustrated by failure.

I have since come to understand that the answer eluded me because it required a lesser mind, or perhaps a mind less bound by the parameters of perfection. Thus, the answer was stumbled upon by another, an intuitive program, initially created to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche.

If I am the father of the Matrix, she would undoubtedly be its mother." Architect - The Matrix Reloaded (via Wikiquote)

As an industry (and engineers) we have a tendency towards being led by logic and there has been a cultural focus (e.g. DevOps) on being led by metrics...we can sometimes miss or downplay the squishy yet equally important emotive side of systems ;)

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

#186

Post by alkonaut »

ravenstine wrote: post #82
leon_sbt wrote: post #69

I really wish social media would "peak" to towards meeting people in real life semi-spontaneously. No profiles, no media uploads, no digital showboating. The best relationships I have with other people fall in this category. Real life,common interests,no digital uploads. Just add attributes of your geolocation and hobbies [biking, yoga,tensorflow,etc] or let it crawl your digital profile(s) to autobuild your attribut…

We seem to be on the same wavelength. I might be giving up a viable idea here, but for a while I've been thinking about a sort of hybrid between Meetup and online multiplayer matchmaking where groups of people can meet up and do stuff without the need for an actual organizer. Here's how I envision it: - A user joins and provides a materials used to perform a background check. - People with accounts sign in and are au…

> Users cannot see who is in groups until they join one. This should help prevent people from backing out of matching because being lazy and skip over lots of people they don't like for minor superficial reasons.

I'd worry more about being rejected in person, than beforehand. Ideally I'd want to never know I was rejected. Instead I'd like to notice when I wasn't (i.e., I'd rather never know there was an event of which I was never invited).

Also: the biggest challenge must be to prevent the whole system becoming impopular because of commercial abuse, i.e. "I went to one of those once for mountain biking, and of the 8 people there, 5 were bike salesmen pretending to socialize but constantly trying to advertise new bikes".

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

#187

Post by lloeki »

danepowell wrote: post #54
benwerd wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. _Exactly_ this. Rather than understanding their users as real humans, having unique insights about them, and building…

Sounds like an example of Goodhart's Law: "When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric." Optimizing for something as abstruse as "engagement" seems like a great way to completely ignore everything that actually makes social networks compelling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

> Optimizing for something as abstruse as "engagement" seems like a great way to completely ignore everything that actually makes social networks compelling.

Or anything else, for that matter. The most shocking part of Android Pie release[0] was the repetition of the "drive engagement" mantra (in the post as well as surrounding articles). Fundamentally, phones are tools; how good is any tool to me when it's purposely designed to make me use it more? A tool should make me more efficient, hence, for the same task, make me use it less! Everything about this is spiralling to artificially inflate dubious metrics such as eyeball time or number of interactions.

[0]: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/08/introducin...

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

#188

Post by kypro »

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?

I think he's talking about buying puts far in the future.

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

#189

Post by tomp »

glalonde wrote: post #166
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.

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?

Options aren't "an investment", think of them more like "gambling". So the 3k is the "fee" (non-refundable), and the "winnings" depend on the price of the stock at a predefined date.

In this case, the parent would buy a put option, which would pay out only if, and proportionally to the amount that, the stock is lower than some predefined price (usually the present price with a small delta).

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

#190

Post by Ntrails »

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?

> Chronological is just one ordering. Why are you so attached to it?

Because one is essentially a feed of data, and the other is obviously/openly being manipulated based on things that I did not choose. The fact remains that removing that option is problematic. They switched the default - fine, makes sense. To remove the basic time ordered feed just shows they aren't interested in allowing users real choice.

I largely mothballed my facebook use years ago - so I'm not a user they should optimise for. But probably have bailed at that anyway.

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