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I miss Facebook

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Re: I miss Facebook

#31

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

fullshark wrote: post #10

Perhaps the writer misses their 20s now that they are 35, like almost everyone.

I'm 36, I agree with the article to the last comma and I don't think it's just an age thing. I enjoyed IRC and ICQ a lot, met a lot of people there, some of which are now very important in my life. I loathed when they were replaced (in my country) with MSN messenger. I didn't like Fotolog, but I enjoyed the very early days of Orkut and then the Facebook golden age mentioned here, and I hated when it became an ad feed and people migrated to Instagram.

So (for me) it's not just a downward slope where older = better as I become crankier, it's that some particular services at some particular points in time hit a sweet spot that others didn't. For me, important qualities are protagonism of text (networks with protagonism of images like Fotolog or Instagram are posturing tools, as the author says), thematic groups/channels (I like to discuss topics like politics, philosophy, videogames, learn languages, etc.), and ways to actually meet people (MSN didn't have this).

Facebook was great in its peak as it ticked all these boxes, with the added value that you could find real-life acquaintances and follow them - no social network has ever been that strong at letting me know about my old classmates' weddings and children, which is a cool thing IMO.

Today, the widespread social tool that comes closest to my ideal may be Telegram groups, but the discovery and meeting people part is only so-so.

Re: I miss Facebook

#32

Post by juststeve »

warent wrote: post #20
Nextgrid wrote: post #14

I am not sure the "niche" Facebook used to fill even exists anymore. The social landscape has changed for the worse. People no longer want to connect with friends, they want to show off how better/popular/wealthier they think they are. Even if someone relaunched that era's Facebook without all the crap I wouldn't be surprised if today's society still manages to make it toxic.

Is this really true or is this a case of "get off my lawn" that seems to naturally come with getting older? People have always behaved that way as far as I know, just by different mediums. Going to the symphony is one of my favorite things and people throw me dirty looks because I don't wear a suit and gaudy jewelry/accessories there; I doubt that's new or a result of social media.

So you just turn up in jeans/t-shirt to listen to some Rachmaninoff?

Re: I miss Facebook

#33

Post by revvx »

lordnacho wrote: post #15

Hits the nail on the head. For me the main uses of FB are now: 1) Rolodex of friends, with reminders from the ones who actually use it. 2) Bad version of stumbleupon. Seriously large amount of unuseful content, but it does kick up something interesting now and again. 3) Reasonable funnies stream. There's always someone with a good meme. There's no real content though. All the news commentary is simply terrible. Loads…

Marketplace is useful if you want to sell things locally.

Re: I miss Facebook

#34

Post by albertgoeswoof »

revvx wrote: post #26
azhenley wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand tagging friends in a comment on FB and IG. This is precisely what the share feature is for!

People do it because every other option sucks. Sharing to someone else's timeline is way too invasive, sharing to your own timeline and tagging the person is weird, sharing via message is too disruptive. What people is looking for is a "Show it to a friend" button that just creates a notification on the person's bell icon and allows them to respond in any way they want.

But would it increase engagement? Number of comments is one way we measure engagement and you’re advocating for a feature that would take away 90% of those comments away? Increase engagement at all costs this is the only way.

Re: I miss Facebook

#35

Post by gbear605 »

epncs wrote: post #27
gbear605 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a twenty year old, the problem is not that people aren’t chatty; it’s that the people you interact with aren’t chatty. For any niche topic you can find a Discord server or a Telegram channel or a Signal group chat or a Slack server or a whatever, where people are chatting about it 24/7. It’s the same model as IRC, although it is unfortunately now siloed.

How was IRC not siloed when you've always had different networks managed by different people?

It’s siloed by technology now when it wasn’t before - you could connect to any irc server with one client but you need a different client for each network now.

Re: I miss Facebook

#36

Post by Animats »

If you really struggle with configuring it, and ignore the right hand column entirely, you can still sort of track what your friends are doing. But I stopped looking at Facebook much a few months back. Maybe twice a month now.

Remember, sharing is spamming.

Re: I miss Facebook

#37

Post by azhenley »

revvx wrote: post #26
azhenley wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand tagging friends in a comment on FB and IG. This is precisely what the share feature is for!

People do it because every other option sucks. Sharing to someone else's timeline is way too invasive, sharing to your own timeline and tagging the person is weird, sharing via message is too disruptive. What people is looking for is a "Show it to a friend" button that just creates a notification on the person's bell icon and allows them to respond in any way they want.

I share via message. It essentially just creates another notification like you suggest.

Re: I miss Facebook

#38

Post by azhenley »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #34
revvx wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do it because every other option sucks. Sharing to someone else's timeline is way too invasive, sharing to your own timeline and tagging the person is weird, sharing via message is too disruptive. What people is looking for is a "Show it to a friend" button that just creates a notification on the person's bell icon and allows them to respond in any way they want.

But would it increase engagement? Number of comments is one way we measure engagement and you’re advocating for a feature that would take away 90% of those comments away? Increase engagement at all costs this is the only way.

Easy and expected solution: they should count the number of Share via Message into the share count (even if it is shared privately).

Are shares not as good of a metric as comments (even though most comments are effectively shares, making them even more noisy)?

Re: I miss Facebook

#39

Post by soniman »

There was a period when the internet was new for everybody, and everybody was discovering it at the same time. It was like the first few weeks of college, except it was the entire world. And that's not going to happen again. Somebody will come up with a new social media app that solves the problems of the current platforms, and it will have some of the old magic. But the rush of the early days of the internet / blogging / social media, was a one time thing.

Re: I miss Facebook

#40

Post by return0 »

joe_the_user wrote: post #3

I assume that I'm fully outside any influential demographic now since not only am I not on Instagram but I don't know anyone on Instagram. My friends who don't do Facebook do either email or Discord (and a good portion of my friends do do Facebook). Honest question, is the division of the world into distinct social networks an expression of increasing social stratification around the world? I know little about Instag…

> is the division of the world into distinct social networks an expression of increasing social stratification

i think it is more about the level of need for social signaling. affluent people probably dont need it , except the narcissistic ones, while signaling seems to be very important for the middle classes.

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