Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 236 posts

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#41

Post by JumpCrisscross »

sytelus wrote: post #40

In all likelyhood this is a “submarine” article crafted by a PR firm like Definers for a hit job on Facebook: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18511963 There are plenty of short sellers who would benefit from FB’s plummeting stock. In reality, FB’s DAU/MAU are largely unchanged. The stories that young people “deleted Facebook” were downright falsehood. There is simply no viable competition for Facebook in market…

> there are plenty of short sellers who would benefit from FB’s plummeting stock

This is a weird meme that’s cropped up in tech circles over the past few years. It’s misleading and incorrect.

No short selling fund sells short and then secretly seeds negative PR pieces. If you’re short, your argument is always strengthened by disclosing you put your money behind your words. Short sellers hire private investigators, commission research and occasionally take out ads against companies. They do not put out hit pieces—it is too inefficient and expensive.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#42

Post by Angostura »

sytelus wrote: post #40

In all likelyhood this is a “submarine” article crafted by a PR firm like Definers for a hit job on Facebook: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18511963 There are plenty of short sellers who would benefit from FB’s plummeting stock. In reality, FB’s DAU/MAU are largely unchanged. The stories that young people “deleted Facebook” were downright falsehood. There is simply no viable competition for Facebook in market…

In all likelihood, since this is The Economist - you're wrong.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#43

Post by ForHackernews »

celrod wrote: post #25
colordrops wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like bank errors, which always seem to be in favor of the bank...

I found this article fascinating: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.130... The jist is, people are extremely bad at basic logic. Unless it's really in their best interest within the context of the story (ie, catching someone cheating you) to be good at them. It makes the difference between 90%. Presumably, everyone wants to get these logic puzzles correct. It just so happens that we're convenie…

One theory is that the brain has evolved specific "modules" that are specialized to certain tasks (i.e. detecting cheaters in social scenarios) and we perform much better when we can rely on these brain-ASICs than when we have to use our general-purpose higher reasoning faculties.

As far as I know, there's no conclusive evidence for reasoning modules, but there do seem to be analogous modules in our visual processing system.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#44

Post by dartf »

kilroy123 wrote: post #8

From reading some of the stuff Yahoo put out back in their prime. I always got the sense that they thought they would never fall and were maybe a bit invincible. I think Zuckerberg and Facebook in general, are very aware that Facebook is on the decline, they need to diversify. That's why they bought Instagram and used it to flight Snap. That's why they spent such an insane amount on WhatsApp. Zuckerberg knows they ne…

One of the reasons I stopped using WhatsApp and Instagram is that they got acquired by FB...

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#46

Post by StephenMelon »

ben_w wrote: post #12
iMark wrote: post #9

Yahoo failed, in part, because its competitors were better. Being better than Facebook doesn't mean just replicating its technology, it means having a better social graph. That's a hard problem to solve.

Doesn’t need to be a better graph, it needs to be good enough to grow. Most FB users probably aren’t “power users”.

Facebook jumped the shark when they started trying to encourage private individuals to “create engagement” and pay to boost their posts. If internal marketing jargon is leaking into your UX, you clearly have serious problems with how your staff are being incentivised.

Facebook could have become an engine that allowed society to maximise human capital and but they sacrificed all that potential at the altar of growth hacking and bleeding advertisers dry.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#47

Post by rblion »

I've been telling people for years that FB is the next AOL or Yahoo. The writing has been on the wall for most of this decade to be honest. In fact, some of my first posts on HN were about this. I should apply to YC...got nothing to lose, everything to gain.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#48

Post by TekMol »

SCdF wrote: post #29
TekMol wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the daily active users then: https://www.statista.com/statistics/346167/facebook-global-d...

I get that's closer, but it's still not that useful, because it doesn't actually capture how people use the software and whether that's changing. People communicate with me via FB messenger, and I respond to them. Otherwise I don't use the app. Am I an active user? Once a day I open it, realise it's shit and vacuous, and importantly my SIL (the only person I still use it to keep up with) hasn't made any useful update…

    Am I an active user?
Yes

    Am I an active user?
Yes

    Am I an active user?
Yes

    Am I an active user?
Yes

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#49

Post by hrktb »

sytelus wrote: post #40

In all likelyhood this is a “submarine” article crafted by a PR firm like Definers for a hit job on Facebook: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18511963 There are plenty of short sellers who would benefit from FB’s plummeting stock. In reality, FB’s DAU/MAU are largely unchanged. The stories that young people “deleted Facebook” were downright falsehood. There is simply no viable competition for Facebook in market…

> There is simply no viable competition for Facebook in market right now like what Yahoo had in terms of Google.

I don’t know if it’s your argument for the decline of facebook being false, but it doesn’t have to come from competition or viable alternatives.

People stopping doing something happens all the time, companies going down because of decreasing interest in their service is a normal thing.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#50

Post by jpatokal »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #39
cenal wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They turned down buying Google. Zuck smartly buys his competitors.

Yahoo bought plenty of other "next big things" Geocities, tumblr, flikr, viaweb, Broadcast.com, del.icio.us, zimbra, and hundreds of others besides. It wasn't clear at the time Google would be any kind of success, you are looking at things with hindsight.

Yahoo's acquisition track record goes beyond unlucky picking, it shows that they can't maintain or grow the services they bought either.

Compare with Google: Maps (Where2), Earth (Keyhole), Waze, YouTube, DoubleClick were all acquisitions they grew to be far larger under Google than they were before.

Disclaimer: I work for Google, although I have nothing to do with acquisitions.

Post reply on HN