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Facebook loses users for the first time

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#541

Post by danieljacksonno »

rendall wrote: post #528

Speaking as someone who deleted his Facebook account years ago, a positive that FB brings to the world is ubiquitous and easy sharing of personal information with the public. With an FB account, you can keep in touch with even casual acquaintances, perhaps forming a connection. That's pretty deep, and a net positive for humanity, and fulfills the promise of the internet. I predict that what we call "social media" tod…

The picture you paint of connecting with friends and acquaintances is no longer how Facebook works for me.

The last years, my Facebook feed has been completely dominated by a few groups I'm in (OK, I guess - but not what I signed up for originally), news and commercial entities I have "liked" at some point, and ads.

I never see my friends there any more, unless they're the marketing hustle type. It feels honestly not entirely unlike LinkedIn, which is not a compliment.

As a test, I visited some of my better friends profiles to see if they have posted anything lately. None had. For YEARS. All their content has moved either to Instagram or Snapchat, or they have just stopped posting altogether.

But my group of friends still use Facebook as our primary Event invitation system, and roughly everyone has FB Messenger (as that's the standard here in Norway).

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#542

Post by konschubert »

randomsearch wrote: post #504

This is how the narrative of Facebook looks to me: Zuckerberg got lucky and then executed brilliantly, transitioned from nerd hacker to CEO amazingly well. He deserves a lot of credit for that. Since then, Facebook have innovated very little. Zuckerberg recognised this, and bought Instagram and Whatsapp in lieu of building an innovative company. The latter is clearly really difficult to do. Without a stream of new id…

I think all centralised social networks have a shelf life.

The question has always been if META manages to create/buy the next big centralised social network after facebook. And this has always been a long shot.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#543

Post by raxxorrax »

laumars wrote: post #479
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was your page full of actual hate speech such as "exterminate the jews" or was it full of "hate speech" such as criticizing politicians who happen to be minorities? Same question regarding fake news: was your page full of actual fake news suh as "Elon Musk has died", or was it full of political speech you don't like, such as "wearing masks is not worth the inconvenience"?

Unfortunately most of the arguments against wearing masks are petty and bullshit given that the inconvenience of wearing one is insignificant for most people. Sure, if you have genuine health concerns wearing one then don’t. But most of the people that moaned about it were really just moaning about being told what to do. I had one mum in my kids school quoting the Magna Carta as a reason not to wear masks, which is s…

Ok, but is that hate speech?

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#544

Post by petesergeant »

gman83 wrote: post #535
randomsearch wrote: post #504

This is how the narrative of Facebook looks to me: Zuckerberg got lucky and then executed brilliantly, transitioned from nerd hacker to CEO amazingly well. He deserves a lot of credit for that. Since then, Facebook have innovated very little. Zuckerberg recognised this, and bought Instagram and Whatsapp in lieu of building an innovative company. The latter is clearly really difficult to do. Without a stream of new id…

The acquisition strategy could have worked going forwards, seeing as there's not much anti-trust will in the U.S. against M&A, but the problem is that they missed the chance to buy musical.ly (bought for $1 billion by ByteDance in 2017) which became TikTok. If they had made this acquisition they would be in a very different position. Looking at my teenage kids and their friends, they barely use Instagram (let alone F…

> Looking at my teenage kids and their friends

I wonder how important this demographic really is. I understand there's an argument for kids being the future, and so on, but almost everyone I know with disposible income is on Instagram and Facebook, via the apps, and seeing ads. As teenage kids stop being teenage kids, they're going to start caring about sharing baby photos and travel photos and cyber-bullying their mayor and stuff, for which the only games in town are Instagram and FB. In short, I don't think it matters if teenagers are ignoring the platforms as long as they age into them, which I think they might well, especially considering kids don't actually have much money to spend.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#545

Post by _ezak »

Facebook, great engineering org as it is, has done a lot of less than great things. Not just bad stuff to others, but less than optimal stuff for themselves as well. Could this be karma? Zuck's chooks coming hoome to roost?

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#546

Post by mrweasel »

ProAm wrote: post #10

When the metaverse actually launches they will skyrocket. They were smart to pivot early. Saying the 'metaverse' is on FB right now is similar to people selling acres on the Moon before anyone landed. FB is planting an imaginary flag on the 'metaverse' hoping they can technically catch up to their claims and capitalize on it.

The main issue with selling "the metaverse" is that Facebook can't do it. Zuckerberg has made sure that the would be early adopters are steering clear of anything coming out of Facebook/Meta.

You can't piss of the tech entusiasts, reviewers, podcasts and everyone in between by constantly exhibiting poor judgement, arrogant behavior and blatantly invading peoples privacy, and then expect them to be excited about your next venture.

Facebook has burned pretty much any goodwill it might have had, and now it want's you to emerge yourself in it's VR world? Zuckerberg has to be incredibly delusional if he think that's going to sell.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#547

Post by [deleted] »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #523
randomsearch wrote: post #504

This is how the narrative of Facebook looks to me: Zuckerberg got lucky and then executed brilliantly, transitioned from nerd hacker to CEO amazingly well. He deserves a lot of credit for that. Since then, Facebook have innovated very little. Zuckerberg recognised this, and bought Instagram and Whatsapp in lieu of building an innovative company. The latter is clearly really difficult to do. Without a stream of new id…

I don't think it's going to die as quickly as you think - it's a pretty sticky product. The network effects that made it attractive might kill it pretty fast when they evaporate, but it's going to be a major player in adtech for at least a decade, which might just give it time to be "saved" by some of the plays they're now pivoting towards. On the ethics thing: they introduced some mechanisms around this, but the app…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#548

Post by emptyfile »

distribot wrote: post #292
agumonkey wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please tell her how she feels when 23 and whatever websites she uses are replaced by some random new fac simile with a different css.

You think TikTok is facsimile of Facebook?

Its a lot worse then Facebook, there isn't even any text.

A hybrid of Vine and Instagram designed to make you stare into your screen with the smallest of interactions.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#549

Post by petesergeant »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #520
randomsearch wrote: post #504

This is how the narrative of Facebook looks to me: Zuckerberg got lucky and then executed brilliantly, transitioned from nerd hacker to CEO amazingly well. He deserves a lot of credit for that. Since then, Facebook have innovated very little. Zuckerberg recognised this, and bought Instagram and Whatsapp in lieu of building an innovative company. The latter is clearly really difficult to do. Without a stream of new id…

>Facebook have innovated very little. Zuckerberg recognised this, and bought Instagram and Whatsapp in lieu of building an innovative company. The latter is clearly really difficult to do. I can't remember who it was - maybe Stratechery - that theorized that Zuckerberg thanks to his experience running Facebook had a really good intuition for when Social media where going to go far and thus was able to make deals that…

> was able to make deals that at first looked wildly overpriced but in the end seemed to be a steal

I wonder how much survivorship bias there is here. Presumably they've made some truly dreadful acquisitions too?

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