Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick

#101

Post by phlux » Wed, Jan 19, 2011, 7:04 PM UTC

alexgartrell wrote: post #89

phlux wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm, in case you haven't noticed, HN is full of FB echo-chamber fanbois who have a combined age still in the 2 digits.

I don't really think your snarky attitude is adding to the discussion, but, more than that, it's not even correct. The vast majority of replies here are decidedly anti facebook, and the ones that arent tend to be luke warm at best. Additionally, if you look at the front page over the last couple days, he popular facebook related articles have been very anti facebook. I'm not trying to make any claims about face book'…

Fine, ill add some detail to my snarky comment. There is so much going on in the valley and in tech right now that frankly has all happened before. Given the market conditions now are far more ripe for all these services, which allows them to be made and more successful now.

The problem I see, and the point of my comment is that we truly aren't seeing too much that is new - but when a company comes along that is hyper successful and full of young talented engineers - people forget history.

That is fine - but I think people need to take a step back sometimes.

Point taken, however. (I'll take my own advice about taking a step back :) )

Re: Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick

#102

Post by Psyonic » Wed, Jan 19, 2011, 7:45 PM UTC

al_james wrote: post #40

Lewisham wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author thinks that it was just "PR and faffery", while discounting the actual value of PR and faffery. Never discount these things. MySpace was practically built on it.

Exactly. "PR and faffery" are the secret sauce that will make or break your business. You can have the best product in the world, but without "PR and faffery" you will never get beyond a handful of early adopters. More than that, any site that looks like it has become successful without "PR and faffery" has just done the "PR and faffery" in a subtle way so that it looks like it has not happened!

Tautology? You've just defined a successful site as one that used PR and faffery to succeed (even if we can't see it), making it impossible to argue otherwise.

Re: Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick

#103

Post by jinushaun » Wed, Jan 19, 2011, 8:34 PM UTC

evanreyn wrote: post #25

Facebook is not made for smart people. It's not made for the readers of Hacker News, this guy's blog, or even the throngs on Reddit. It's made for everyone else. I work in a place with some people who will work/have worked minimum wage jobs their whole life (not that there's anything wrong with that). But these same people are on the internet all the time, and you know what they do? Check facebook. Facebook chat. Loo…

Geeks are just angry because there is now more regular people using the internet than geeks. It's no longer restricted to the elites. As a business idea, it just makes much more sense to target the 80% of society instead of the 20%. (Made up numbers)

Re: Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick

#104

Post by yason » Wed, Jan 19, 2011, 8:55 PM UTC

billybob wrote: post #100

yason wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't used Bcc many times but generally Facebook messages seem all phony to me. It doesn't seem to be a real conversation; I don't "own" the messages the same way I do when I use a real email program. Even gmail offers me tools to work with the messages themselves: on Facebook there's very little I can do with the messages. Basically I can just reply or delete the thread: exactly the same options that I have with…

Yes: you don't own the messages. It is a private internet that FB owns. That's why I don't like it. The internet is meant to be decentralized. I use Mail Service X, you use Y, maybe one of us runs our own mail server. Doesn't matter. A common protocol makes it work. If my mail server dies or your service goes offline, any emails we've sent still live on the remaining server. If we want private communications, we can…

Very well put! This I had in mind, lacking the words.

Re: Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick

#105

Post by MJR » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 12:11 AM UTC

mbreese wrote: post #22

MJR wrote: post #3

I wish I could sign on to the damn thing and not have the first thing I feel be exasperation at the aggressive dimness of it UI and its functionality. People use Facebook because they see past the "website" and read the content. They communicate with their friends and family. How many non-technical people have you ever heard complain about email apps? They don't because they use email to communicate, not to use an em…

> How many non-technical people have you ever heard complain about email apps You should pick a better analogy. Every single non-technical person I know has complained about their email app. Usually it's some stupid Outlook/Exchange quirk...

You're right - my intention was to get simpler than that, and I wasn't thinking about Outlook or Exchange which are filled with problems because I don't use them. I was thinking along the lines of reply, compose, forward, signatures, etc. Simple concepts that people learn and apply with ease.

Re: Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick

#106

Post by dcdan » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 3:56 AM UTC

But the idea that it’s doing something better, new or innovative is largely PR and faffery.

Facebook is incredibly innovative at growing its user base. No other social network has concentrated on and succeeded at this like Facebook.

Re: Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick

#107

Post by al_james » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 11:30 AM UTC

Psyonic wrote: post #102

al_james wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. "PR and faffery" are the secret sauce that will make or break your business. You can have the best product in the world, but without "PR and faffery" you will never get beyond a handful of early adopters. More than that, any site that looks like it has become successful without "PR and faffery" has just done the "PR and faffery" in a subtle way so that it looks like it has not happened!

Tautology? You've just defined a successful site as one that used PR and faffery to succeed (even if we can't see it), making it impossible to argue otherwise.

You can argue all you want! I have just expressed my honest belief that all successful sites use "PR and faffery" in some way or the other, even if its not obvious.

Re: Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick

#108

Post by sans-serif » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 1:53 PM UTC

randallsquared wrote: post #77

sans-serif wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, are you serious? Since 90% of my non-techie friends can figure out who's going to see what you write in walls, messages and photo comments, I'm pretty devastated to hear that 5 HN users find it a challenge.

I think your non-techie friends are just assuming that the folks that they want to see what they write, will, and those they don't want to see what they write, won't. And, mostly, they're right. The biggest problem, for me, is that who can see these things is not up to only those involved in the conversation. It hardly even matters what the exact effect is of the rules currently in place, since they could change at a…

You're debating me out of context. Greatgrandparent raised the point about usability and I was simply rebutting it.

Re: Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick

#109

Post by inklesspen » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 5:08 PM UTC

michael_dorfman wrote: post #57

Facebook shouldn’t be telling me how many “friends” I should have, especially when there’s clearly no technological impetus for it. Does Facebook do that? I get recommendations of people I might know, but I don't recall ever being told how many friends I should have.

There's a maximum limit.

Re: Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick

#110

Post by eru » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 6:03 PM UTC

mbreese wrote: post #22

MJR wrote: post #3

I wish I could sign on to the damn thing and not have the first thing I feel be exasperation at the aggressive dimness of it UI and its functionality. People use Facebook because they see past the "website" and read the content. They communicate with their friends and family. How many non-technical people have you ever heard complain about email apps? They don't because they use email to communicate, not to use an em…

> How many non-technical people have you ever heard complain about email apps You should pick a better analogy. Every single non-technical person I know has complained about their email app. Usually it's some stupid Outlook/Exchange quirk...

The technical person are also complaining about Outlook and Exchange, if they have to use it.