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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

#551

Post by TulliusCicero »

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…

> It looks like the timeline for VR won't be short enough to save FB, but even if it were arriving soon enough he must know that FB probably isn't capable of delivering a truly new thing.

I think it is...eventually. But the technology to go from where we're at -- where it's mostly just useful for games -- to a true game-changer in the big picture, it's just not there yet. Gonna be several years at the bare minimum, probably, a lot of problems still need to be solved.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#552

Post by jdkjs »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #519
WeekSpeller wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently reported a hate speech targeted at Indian minority (not Muslim). The text literally had gen$c!d3 threats and other usual trigger words in it, and there were like copy paste of same post in thousands (probably a campaign). Facebook replied "does not violate their conditions blah blah".

Just curious, why did you write “gen$c!d3”? The options I can think of are: 1. You’re worried that a script on HN will delete your comment, similar to how this seems to work on YouTube 2. You’re censoring that word to avoid “triggering” people 3. You’re copying verbatim an excerpt from the hate speech you’re referencing I’m asking in earnest; I honestly don’t know which of those three (or any other option?) it is.

People are hardwired to censor some words like that (like cov!d) precisely because of 1

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#553

Post by whiplash451 »

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…

Are we reading the same comment? @randomsearch said it would take decades for the company to decline.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#554

Post by websap »

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…

You lost me at Zukerburg got lucky. Facebook changed social media forever, they completely innovated this domain.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#555

Post by emptyfile »

ByThyGrace wrote: post #476
elwell wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is for old people. Instagram is for moderately old people. Snapchat is for moderately young people. TikTok is for young people.

Whenever I see this "social network per age group" depiction, Twitter is never mentioned. I wonder why.

3 times less users then any of the others. Most of those in english speaking countries.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#556

Post by Melkman »

jl6 wrote: post #512
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…

> … VR is a good play I find your analysis excellent apart from this bit. It’s really far from obvious to me that VR has any future outside a gaming niche.

As much as I like VR I have to agree it will stay a niche product. The need to wear something on your head is a major hurdle. Like 3D TV's that have mostly disappeared. Also when you are in a VR environment you want to interact with it. You need free physical space to do that which is an other hurdle. There are more niches than gaming only though. Like education and product design and demonstration.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#557

Post by brtkdotse »

FullyFunctional wrote: post #526
davedx wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with most of what you wrote up to this point: > He's a super smart and prescient thinker, so he can see VR is a good play He made a school yearbook on the internet and copied some features from existing social networks like MySpace. Facebook was just in the right place at the right time and executed well. The jury is very much still out on whether "VR is a good play", too. It might turn out to be a gigantic o…

Anyone remember that Next Big Thing was supposed to be 3D TVs? I think VR is similarly misguided (ie, will never go mainstream but will have a healthy niche).

A non-trivial percentage of the population get motion sickness easily. VR is a non-starter for them.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#558

Post by whiplash451 »

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…

Brilliant analysis. I would add to the list that a much higher level of scrutiny from M&A regulators is going to be the last nail in the coffin (making new massive acquisition a lot harder).

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#559

Post by mrweasel »

batiudrami wrote: post #309
adewinter wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's even a metric for that: Daily Active Users. I bet Facebook does not publish that number (or the historical values for it). I bet that number has been going down lately, at least for North American users. There's a reason they changed their name.

This article is literally about their daily active users number dropping.

It's really ONLY the daily users that are dropping, everything else is still going up:

> But not all growth trends were negative. The company’s family of apps, which encompass Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger continued to modestly add users. The number of users logging in monthly to Facebook continued to grow, even as the number of daily users dropped.

What's interesting is that it seems like Facebook isn't counting Messager users as Facebook users and that more users are actually using Facebook every month, just not as frequently as before.

The weird bit is that a drop that small and cause Facebook/Meta to lose that much value. The stock market either reads the news like HN does, or Facebook is a lot more fragile that I would have guessed.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#560

Post by hyperbovine »

FullyFunctional wrote: post #526
davedx wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with most of what you wrote up to this point: > He's a super smart and prescient thinker, so he can see VR is a good play He made a school yearbook on the internet and copied some features from existing social networks like MySpace. Facebook was just in the right place at the right time and executed well. The jury is very much still out on whether "VR is a good play", too. It might turn out to be a gigantic o…

Anyone remember that Next Big Thing was supposed to be 3D TVs? I think VR is similarly misguided (ie, will never go mainstream but will have a healthy niche).

I think this is a great analogy in that there are fundamental physiological limits on how much 3D TV the human body wants to watch, and the answer is “not much”. All the VR/AR products I have seen fall into the same boat—a bit of a lark to use for an hour or so, beyond that, no thanks. It is a fundamentally different experience than reading a screen or listening to earbuds, and I don’t mean that in a good way.
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