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U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

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Re: U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

#151

Note: personal opinion bellow It seems to me that the overall interest in Facebook is decreasing. The social network hasn't had any interesting feature added to it in the last couple of years. It's becoming boring and boring, so that's why I believe people are leaving. Still, Instagram and WhatsApp are running strong with barely no competition. We don't see any news about their user base decreasing and news channels…

>The social network hasn't had any interesting feature added to it in the last couple of years.

If I recall, correctly, the last major feature (read: that had any fanfare) was when they added the ability to have hi-res photos (and more of them), which was timed with the release of the Transformers movie? So, yeah, it's been a hot minute since they did anything substantial.

Re: U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

#152
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nextdoor really needs to get it's act together on siloing neighborhood discussions, it's basically built for this.

Nextdoor is terrible. I get push notified of every lost cat or dog. Or whenever the local grocery store is out of cabbage. Or "suspicious people" walking around. I can't find a way to get any value out of it.

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Re: U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

#153

It feels like Facebook now contains all of the negative parts of social media - complaining, arguing, chain posts, fake news, relatives, etc. While Instagram now has all the pleasant parts - pretty photos of families, vacations and food! So these days I find myself using Instagram regularly and Facebook almost never. Having said that, I'll never leave Facebook until something else replaces it. It's the only place I h…

Instagram to me seems like the worst parts of social media, in that it's a vanity feeding mechanism amplified. Which in turn makes it an anxiety inducing experience if you aren't doing "cool things" that make other people jealous.

I agree with you completely.

Instagram is social McDonalds. Quick gratification from pretty pictures of friends doing cool shit, ranked so that the prettiest friends appear on your newsfeed first.

Try putting a serious post on Instagram, nobody will see it and it will fall flat.

Meanwhile I put out a post on Facebook asking for help (after my house was burgled) and had about 15 people messaging me within a couple of hours willing to come around to my place and lend me a hand.

You can't even share links on Instagram, so I'm sure that the GoFundMe that was set up to help cover the money that was stolen from me would've gotten a lot less money than it has.

I like Instagram as an entertainment platform for looking at cool photos, and for posting the occasional photo myself (never of myself, always landscape of event photography), but it's absolute trash as a social media platform.

Re: U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

#154

Anecdotally, I work with teenagers and none of them have a Facebook pages. It's viewed as a place for old people and parents. For me personally, it's almost impossible to deal with. Way too many political posts from my friends and family. It's probably best use for me is local events and an occasional major event from a friend/family member. Still, I find myself going there less and less. From a small business standp…

> I would gladly pay $5-$10 a month for something that didn't sell my data. Hmm. Facebook has something like 2 billion profiles. Of course, most of them wouldn't pay $5/month - say that only one percent would. 20 million profiles times $5/month = $100 million/month. It might be worth it for someone to try to build such a thing...

An anecdotal story about this - a couple of years ago I built a paid, ad-free privacy-focused social network, did several Show HNs for it and even here, in a community that seems quite receptive to the idea in principle, there was extremely low interest in it.

I got probably 50 sign-ups over a few Show HNs, no more than 4/5 upvotes and comments on the most well-received Show HN, and those who came in just posted one or two test posts, found obviously that nobody else was on there and left never to be seen again. Obviously none converted to a paid account (you could get 10 connections for free then afterwards pay $2/month).

Bootstrapping any social network, let alone a paid one, is hard. But I did try :-)

Re: U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

#155

I lost too many "friends" on Facebook: I knew these people for many years, but I was shocked what they posted - from stupid to incredible things, mostly politics and mostly far left. I started cutting all these people and I was left with less than 20 when I closed my account.

> mostly politics and mostly far left You're upset that your friends have different political opinions than you? And you're blaming Facebook for this? Why?

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Re: U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

#156
post #43

Note: personal opinion bellow It seems to me that the overall interest in Facebook is decreasing. The social network hasn't had any interesting feature added to it in the last couple of years. It's becoming boring and boring, so that's why I believe people are leaving. Still, Instagram and WhatsApp are running strong with barely no competition. We don't see any news about their user base decreasing and news channels…

I deleted my account years ago, but ended up creating a fake account under a fictitious identity for the odd event organized through Facebook. I log in every so often just to see what's up. It appears to be a mixture of paid content and two random friends posting memes. I have to think people are deriving some value from it, but I cannot imagine what it is.

I have to think people are deriving some value from it, but I cannot imagine what it is.

I know a couple of people who don't have any Facebook "friends" connected to their accounts, but they follow brands and companies they're interested in keeping up with.

It's sort of like RSS, but with more companies on board.

Re: U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

#157
What's the accounting for people who still have Facebook accounts but realistically never or very infrequently check them?

I've had no interest in using my Facebook since it became Babybook, and maybe I'll poke at it once a month to see if I've missed someone's huge life event (you know, other than people having babies)... but that's it - I just have no more interest in surrendering my thoughts, photo copyrights and what's left of my privacy there anymore.

Re: U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The social network hasn't had any interesting feature added to it in the last couple of years. I actually found some great rugs (owners did not know what they had!) and furniture on the FB marketplace. Much better finds than on craigslist, and easier to verify that the seller is a human.

Agreed. Craigslist was tainted by the unsavory element of prostitution and stolen goods and isn’t a resource that I seek out. Facebook marketplaces seem like what eBay was in the 90s.

Craigslist was tainted by the unsavory element of prostitution and stolen goods and isn’t a resource that I seek out.

IME, Facebook Marketplace is far from free of scams and stolen merchandise. That's why some people call it Fencebook.

Re: U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

#160
post #90

They are going to Instagram though. Thats one of facebook smartest move. Buying all the other social media sites.

This is also one of the biggest failures of the modern antitrust law. If giants like FB can't innovate and must buy competition to survive despite all the advantages they have, something is wrong.

Counterpoint:

Many new innovative companies are being founded in this space and those that are successful are richly rewarded (by selling to FB). The system is working exactly how it is supposed to.

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