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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

#251

Post by Pigo »

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

I'm forced to interact with certain people in my life through certain social media tools, but I lost interest in most if it a long time ago. I've tried to quantify what it is that made it so exciting at first, and the best thing I can think of is that I used to meet new people or engage with people I wanted to get to know better when things were first kicking off.

I never wanted it to become the way I talk to my folks, I wanted to talk to that cute girl in my class or some guy in Russia that happened to like the Smashing Pumpkins too. Maybe I'm not using it right, but it seems more difficult to find new people while wading through ads and political posts from peripheral friends.

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

#252

Post by tw04 »

jchw wrote: post #110
hcknwscommenter wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except he will be 0.1 generations behind. Literally, the day you release your update he will start feverishly reverse engineering it. Once you show the way with all your hard work, copying becomes easy. Good luck monetizing that.

What's the incentive to crack it, to sell it? Does the cracker sell it for less? Would I be willing to buy a cracked piece of software? It'd be a horribly unsafe idea if it were, for example, security software or a tool for modifying my operating system. Even in a complete wild west, some people are going to do the right thing. Maybe even most people. Probably is far more a cultural issue than a legal or technical on…

>Would I be willing to buy a cracked piece of software?

It doesn't matter if you would, it matters if the general public would. And all you have to do is look to China, where more cracked copies of windows are sold every day than legitimate copies. The only reason that doesn't exist here is because it's almost impossible for the average consumer to buy a cracked copy. If they were available at every corner store the average person would make that choice 9 times out of 10. And if they'll take that risk on the entire OS, they won't bat an eye at a rom.

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

#253

Post by Vinnl »

murph-almighty wrote: post #239
Vinnl wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Haha, absolutely; especially since you quickly make friends with the kinds of people that go to these events, with the consequence that you're no longer able to go to these events.

But who knows, maybe enough people end up in a position where they want to make new friends (I'm thinking failed marriages, lonely elderly people, etc.) that there's a steady enough flow of new members.

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

#254

Post by Nightshaxx »

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 think Web 3.0 is going to be more focused on small communities and niche-focused platforms. Look at how many people shove money to twitch streamers and YouTube personalities that have minimal operating costs but extremely strong communities.

The whole reason companies like the web is because it provides high profit margins since compared to physical things, the web is incredibly cheap. Communites allow companies to make money off of feelings and comradre that their users build for them. Twitter doesn't have sense of community so people are quick to leave, but even if pewdiepie left YouTube, the platform would be fine because it has so many other niches that people would stay for.

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

#255

Post by graeme »

qvrjuec wrote: post #121
fullshark wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironic this is here given Snap supposedly lost users with a redesign independent/at odds with such techniques.

It wasn't at odds with those techniques. The redesign was meant to force the users to view sponsored stories by sacrificing the usability of the app to view their friends stories. To look at the redesign as some kind of improvement for the users is totally wrong, IMO.

Yes, but the point was they went on gut, not based on UI testing. It was a terrible blunder, since mostly reverted.

Actual messages would get pushed down because a new story from an acquantaince popped up. Even with no ads it was bad UI.

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

#256

Post by Kurtz79 »

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.

Not at a local level.

In many countries in Europe, WhatsApp is just about ubiquitous, and used by the average guy way more often than email.

The same (from what I understand) for WeChat in China.

Yes, if you need to communicate outside of your local circle of family and friends, e-mail is still king (for business communication for example, no contest), but how often does the average guy does it?

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

#257

Post by majos »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #209
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.…

Yeah there's still billions of people that aren't online yet, and even without all of the optimization targets, people still use services like Facebook, Snapchat, Whatsapp, etc multiple times per day - all of these services will remain highly profitable even with declining usage figures. It's just that their share prices will take a hit and shareholders will be disgruntled. Fuck those guys though.

I'm not sure how close tech companies are to monetizing the kinds of users who aren't online yet. For example, I talked to somebody at Microsoft a while back who said that Bing doesn't even serve ads to many African users because there isn't a sufficient advertiser base trying to court those users. So the last few billion users may be we less profitable than the first few billion.

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

#258

Post by crzwdjk »

kasey_junk wrote: post #223
kristiandupont wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I hear startups declare that they are data-driven I get the image of a person driving a car by focusing stritcly on the dashboard.

There are situations where the only safe way to fly a plane is to ignore everything but the instruments... Though I suppose in this stretched analogy those are not great positions to be in.

There are also situations where a sticky note can be a vital piece of safety equipment because an instrument is malfunctioning. And even though the pilot knows the instrument is showing bogus data, they're so used to looking at it that they will instinctively do so and react to its bogus indications, so the safest thing is to hide it from view entirely. Fortunately there's enough redundancy in the information from the basic instruments that even if one of them fails, you can still fly the plane by extrapolating the missing information from the other ones.

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

#259

Post by stef25 »

jefe_ wrote: post #245
stef25 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their incessant need to grow This need is something I've never really understood and indeed is the root of all these problems. Zuck wouldn't be mister billionaire if he'd kept FB V1, but the world would have been better for it.

Growth or opportunities for growth must be present to convince buyers and investors to exchange more-liquid assets like cash for less-liquid assets like ownership. I part with $100 that I can spend anywhere for a share of stock that I hope will grow in value. Without opportunity for growth I have no incentive to part with my $100. In the Facebook example, if Zuckerberg didn't want to grow Facebook, but wanted to stil…

Without wanting to sound like a socialist, couldn't these apps / businesses just be built to "cover costs"? Instead of producing 500 millionaires.

I'm not saying I could necessarily resist the temptation of becoming a millionaire at the cost of turning my great idea in to a shitty one, but I sure wouldn't feel good about it.

Perhaps I'm just a bit naive about these things.

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

#260

Post by slantaclaus »

jryan49 wrote: post #73
dosy wrote: post #47

Does HN qualify as "social media"? We are not anywhere near "Peak Social Media". Otherwise investor valuations would not be what they are. Even discounting they can predict the future, Zuck hasn't even got started on his VR/AR "ready player 1" social network dream yet, decentralized social media hasn't had its try for the title yet, and the non-social big 5 are still waiting for FB weakness for their chance to strike…

Investor validations of tech before the bubble wasn't super accurate. I mean facebook lost 20% of it's value in a day, how does that not scream speculative bubble?

Facebook’s PE is like 25. Best to stay focused on valuation metrics. Historically it’s a steal, in fact I expect it slide back to 30 in the near term
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