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Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

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Re: Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

#91
I think the focus on Stories is a huge mistake. Disclaimer: I'm too old to "get it". I've only used stories a few times, they feel like a huge time sink vs a normal FB/IG post, and that investment seems less worthwhile for something that doesn't stick around like a vacation photo album that I or someone else might refer back to later. I've only used stories when (say) traveling solo, and I want to post more mundane shit because I don't have a ton going on. Keeps folks at home more apprised of what I'm up to, but not the kind of content that's 'important/curated' enough to keep forever.

So on to why I think it's a mistake. Yes, both the core business and the stories rely on the network effects of social networks to gain/maintain popularity. But encouraging users to share ephemeral content makes the switching costs much lower. If some new "yourspace" competitor came along, I'd be hesitant to switch because I LIKE the library of content myself and my friends and family have built up over the years. If literally all that prevents me from switching is where my friends are, I can use both until everyone switches, and then just drop the one entirely.

Don't get me wrong, Facebook is still almost worthless to users without friends using it, but the switching costs are still higher when there's old content.

Re: Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

#92
post #55

I can say what has reduced my Facebook use, if anybody in a relevant position at the company is reading. It's the content Facebook shows me. A decade or so ago, most of the content I saw on Facebook was original content from people I know. Most posts were either text written by someone I knew, or a photo taken by someone I knew. Perhaps not everybody shares this position, but what I most want from Facebook is to keep…

I find that IG has at LEAST as many ads as FB. I use both regularly; I prefer Facebook because of the "community of friends and family" feel to it, but I'm sure I use it less than I used to. Part of the problem for me was engaging with groups more. They're easier to 'ignore' for a week and not feel like you missed anything, and if your feed is more and more group stuff it's easy to feel like you don't have 'time' for it, where the friends+family stuff beckons to me more.

Twitter is basically complete toxic trash and I don't touch it.

Re: Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

#93
post #77
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been my experience as well. Equally annoying are the notifications menu (the actual notifications, I disabled a long time ago). I've been relying on them since the feed is useless but now they too have become cluttered with things like "posts you may have missed". I would love a platform that is just original content (text and original media), and where any links are just text WITHOUT previews. Kinda like ho…

My problem with twitter has always been that it tries very hard to discourage content with much depth. There are more ways around the fact that every tweet has to be bite-size than there used to be, and the character limit is higher, but the fundamental model remains the same. Facebook has taken some steps in the same direction too, hiding any long post or comment behind a "read more" link and offering flashy backgro…

The entire purpose of twitter seems to be to say the most outrageous thing possible to gain the most attention and the most retweets and popularity to drive 'engagement'. It is the exact opposite of what I want out of social media. The loudest, most obnoxious voices are the ones I care about the least.

Re: Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

#95
post #91

I think the focus on Stories is a huge mistake. Disclaimer: I'm too old to "get it". I've only used stories a few times, they feel like a huge time sink vs a normal FB/IG post, and that investment seems less worthwhile for something that doesn't stick around like a vacation photo album that I or someone else might refer back to later. I've only used stories when (say) traveling solo, and I want to post more mundane s…

Here's one bonus point of stories that makes me and my friends use it alot, that you might not have considered - it doesn't have publicly viewable like counts, so I post pictures that I normally wouldn't post because they would have gotten an embarrassingly low amount of likes/comments.

Re: Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

#96
post #8

I am happy that we have Snapchat and iMessage as competitors to the Facebook Apps. I very much dislike their business practices of sucking up all the data they can get their hands on e.g. during the acquisition of WhatsApp where they had to promise to European [1] regulators to not combine the user data with facebook‘s and then did it anyway. Also sad that they were so successful in copying Snapchat’s story feature -…

I don't think I've ever used an app that was less intuitive and less user friendly than snap. That's probably why.

Re: Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enjoy insta while it lasts. They are having more and more sponsored posts creep into the feed. I don’t expect this trend to reverse. It’s how they make money.

I have mentioned this before here - instagram ads are a bit too creepy. I have had multiple personal ads that were eerily accurate and I hadn’t even discussed these things over any written form. I’m not paranoid to think they are listening to the microphone but the coincidence is super uncanny. It crossed the line for me twice in the past few months alone.

For me this only started happening after I offered feedback aka "Don't show me ads like this any more."

Of course I realized shortly thereafter: "Do I really want better targeted ads on my Instagram feed?"

It's a little too late now but if I had to do it over again I would let it guess, mostly poorly, and that makes it easier to filter out the sponsored content.

Re: Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

#98
post #55

I can say what has reduced my Facebook use, if anybody in a relevant position at the company is reading. It's the content Facebook shows me. A decade or so ago, most of the content I saw on Facebook was original content from people I know. Most posts were either text written by someone I knew, or a photo taken by someone I knew. Perhaps not everybody shares this position, but what I most want from Facebook is to keep…

This is what people used to call "selling out". There's no money in original content between friends, facebook doesn't care that they no longer serve this need for you. Their new job is to show ads for fortune 500 companies so that the pension funds invested in the facebook stock can continue to make money.

Of course there's money in original content. You need that to keep people coming back to the feed to make any money on the ads.

What you're seeing is the results of dozens of teams individually optimizing against growth goals, which are actually inputs to a complex system that is difficult to predict.

Re: Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enjoy insta while it lasts. They are having more and more sponsored posts creep into the feed. I don’t expect this trend to reverse. It’s how they make money.

Confirmed. Last time I checked, every 6th post was an ad. Just checked and it’s now every 5th. There’s several large magazines that are 50% ad content. I bet that’s the ceiling.

Adorable that you think they would be satisfied at 50% ad content!

Re: Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

#100
post #11
post #8

I am happy that we have Snapchat and iMessage as competitors to the Facebook Apps. I very much dislike their business practices of sucking up all the data they can get their hands on e.g. during the acquisition of WhatsApp where they had to promise to European [1] regulators to not combine the user data with facebook‘s and then did it anyway. Also sad that they were so successful in copying Snapchat’s story feature -…

> Also sad that they were so successful in copying Snapchat’s story feature - it made Snapchat so unique. Now nobody is using Snapchat for it anymore and everybody is on IG instead. I don't see what's sad about that, if the only thing that made SC unique is a feature that was so easily copied into EVERY FB app (messenger, instagram, even FB itself) then SC was anything but unique. Ultimately execution is what matters…

> Ultimately execution is what matters, and snapchat had a terrible app (at least on android) forever.

Take this with a grain of salt, but:

https://variety.com/2017/biz/news/snapchat-evan-spiegel-only...

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