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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

#231

Post by degenerate »

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…

NYT is dead. Their long-form articles on specific topics are still good, but their news reporting is trash.

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

#232

Post by laken »

spacehome wrote: post #105
natrik wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you pick and choose with IM?

I guess you can. Email seems to be more popular, though. For any given person, there's a higher likelihood they have email than any particular IM client.

I agree that more people have an email address than a particular IM client, however, a lot of people outside of the tech bubble don't use email much anymore for personal communication.

iMessage is the solidified IM platform I see most, as if you have an iPhone, you have iMessage.

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

#234

Post by Grazester »

tokyodude wrote: post #217
lloeki wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I wish there was some kind of pledge or iOS/Android rule not to waste my time. Example: I'm on 2 dating app. I want notification on so I can make sure to receive messages from actual people but I get one notification every day from each app "You should check for new matches today!" Nether app has a way to turn off that notification. Google Maps now does something like this too where they are trying to get me to add r…

Yes you can turn it off. Its kind of annoying if you're not a contributor

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

#235

Post by Qwertie »

wastedhours wrote: post #202
Qwertie wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instagram has a pretty craptastic UI itself. It's a pain in the ass to copy images from the web UI (Have to use the inspector to get the link) and the video player doesn't let you skip ahead or move back.

I'd agree if those tasks were part of what they were planning to be a part of the app experience - but seeing as they're explicitly not , then from a pure design perspective, the UI is perfect in that regard.

It's bad, but bad intentionally. I haven't noticed it being buggy like snap chat. They just went out of their way to break features the browser gives you for free.

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

#236

Post by Qwertie »

laken wrote: post #232
spacehome wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you can. Email seems to be more popular, though. For any given person, there's a higher likelihood they have email than any particular IM client.

I agree that more people have an email address than a particular IM client, however, a lot of people outside of the tech bubble don't use email much anymore for personal communication. iMessage is the solidified IM platform I see most, as if you have an iPhone, you have iMessage.

In Australia SMS is still widely used because of IM fragmentation. A proprietary IM platform will never take over and we will stay in the current mess until one of the open source standards become well used.

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

#237

Post by danmaz74 »

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. You can't make money off of good vibes and authenticity without metrics

Having metrics is important, but thinking that metrics - any set of metrics - capture the whole of reality is delusional. And anyway, in the end you can always quantify your ROI in terms of money.

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

#238

Post by dredmorbius »

dredmorbius wrote: post #101
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

I'd give Gresham some due as well.

Many possible examples, but Dwight MacDonald's "Mass Culture" (1953) is a good start.

https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDon...

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

#239

Post by murph-almighty »

Vinnl wrote: post #145
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…

Heh, this makes me think of this anti-viral startup idea I had - which I'm not going to make because it's... Anti-viral and thus not something I think I could pull off. Anyway, the idea was pretty funny: a meetup-like website where you'd sign in with e.g. Facebook, and then you could only see and attend meetups that none of your Facebook friends are attending. In other words: everybody goes to these meetups with the…

Wouldn't this service, ideally, become useless after enough time because everyone would eventually become friends with each other?

Then again maybe that WOULD solve our problems.

(Disclaimer- I recognize this wasn't a serious proposition, and actually think it's a pretty cool idea)

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

#240

Post by gnode »

colordrops wrote: post #55

What does this title even mean? We aren't at peak social media until we are embedded in a mechano-biological matrix hive mind. I'm not joking.

"Peak social media" (like "peak oil") doesn't mean maximum theoretically attainable consumption, but the point in time at which consumption is highest, and can thereafter be expected to only ever be less.
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