I am not against swipe up/down UI, but I really hate vertical vids. And sadly they won today.
Facebook's TikTok-like redesign marks sunset of social networking era
131–140 of 687 posts
Re: Facebook's TikTok-like redesign marks sunset of social networking era
#132This actually makes me pretty sad. For all of Facebook's ills, it did at least do a good job of keeping me connected with friends before it got weird. Same with Instagram. Twitter is fantastic because it helps me discover new people, new interests, new worlds, in a way. TikTok doesn't feel social at all. It feels entirely too performative. Everything on there is a performance. Everything is an act. Everything is simp…
What does the research show as to why people won't pay a subscription or entertain another type of monetization model?
Re: Facebook's TikTok-like redesign marks sunset of social networking era
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook is dying, but not because of TikTok. Facebook is dying because they stopped being Facebook. If they gave what's left of their userbase what they actually wanted (chronological feed, seeing friends posts, not seeing spam, more ways to interact (bring back pets, gifts, superpokes etc)) they'd do ok. It doesn't help that their core code is a steaming pile of bloated dung that doesn't seem to be tested by anyone…
> Facebook is dying because they stopped being Facebook a) No evidence they are dying. All we have is a single quarter's result i.e. statistically meaningless. b) No evidence that staying true to the original Facebook is the best strategy. Unquestionably, Stories has been a popular feature in both Instagram and Facebook ecosystems and perhaps certain features from TikTok will be the same. But there is plenty of evide…
I think it's really difficult to tell if they are dying or not. I don't think MAU or DAU gives the full picture as it doesn't tell us what people are using it for, what sort of new accounts are coming online (are they real people, bots, businesses or what?), and how active people actually are. Are people logging in for easy auth or are they spending more or less time actively browsing the site.
You're right that HN is not the right place to judge this. I will say, as someone who works with high school kids, almost none of them have seemed to use it over the last 4-5 years.
Re: Facebook's TikTok-like redesign marks sunset of social networking era
#134Somewhat unrelated, but the other day I was trying to see which of my friends still live in the city I used to live in, as I was about to visit.
I could not find a way to filter friends by current city. Seems like such an obvious feature meant for a side supposedly about connecting you with friends. Guess it wouldn’t move the right KPIs.
Re: Facebook's TikTok-like redesign marks sunset of social networking era
#135Nobody hates Facebook users more than Facebook, I guess. :-/ I've tried to type out several pithy comments, but the bottom line (to me) is that Facebook just doesn't respect its users or care about their needs. Can you imagine if brick-and-mortar businesses tried to do this? You go out for a Big Mac, but it's not on the menu anymore because Taco Bell had a few really good quarters, so McDonald's decided to pivot to t…
To quote the article Facebook really has "unleashed waves of democratic empowerment" among the youth in certain countries where democracy is not present or is under serious assault and the domestic media is censored. If some random dictatorship has strict anti-speech laws Meta is way more lax about following them than the domestic media (who are just going to get arrested if they don't). This really has created a gen…
I agree with most of your point but why be dismissive of the very evident reality of how corroded democracy has become in the Western world in large part because of how Facebook-poisoned certain demographics and their elected representives have become?
https://twitter.com/USA_Polling/status/1552006668514369536
Two-thirds of respondents (67.2%, 95% CI 66.1%, 68.4%) perceived “a serious threat to our democracy,” but more than 40% agreed that “having a strong leader for America is more important than having a democracy” and that “in America, native-born white people are being replaced by immigrants.” Half (50.1%) agreed that “in the next few years, there will be civil war in the United States.”
Re: Facebook's TikTok-like redesign marks sunset of social networking era
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's what people want, per se. I think it's what some metrics say people want. Might be good for "engagement", but bad for retention in the long term. People were on facebook for the features facebook had.
> People were on facebook for the features facebook had. People were on Facebook for the people that were on Facebook.
Anecdotally I quit Facebook in 2016 but of my friends and family that still use it, I would say most simply use it for marketplace. They may still view the updates that people still post to see what's going on but it doesn't seem to be near as about keeping in touch (I'm in the US).
Re: Facebook's TikTok-like redesign marks sunset of social networking era
#137I stopped using this years ago, except I still have an account and minorly check once a week or month depending on my mood. I'll give the same refrain I expect from most: how do I keep up with goings-on of long-lost friends, family members with whom I don't want to directly interact but want to know what they're "up to" and to know about major life events? Maybe the answer is that I should delete facebook and go back to beforetimes when the world was smaller and I only interacted with people in my immediate geographic area except at decennial family reunions.
Re: Facebook's TikTok-like redesign marks sunset of social networking era
#138It’s crazy to think the social media era may finally be ending. There’s really no viable platform anymore where you can just go passively keep up with what friends and acquaintances are doing. Everything is about feeding you content you didn’t ask for but may be targeted enough to catch your attention. And for what? To show you some ads here and there? To collect data that can be used to… sell more ads and products?…
> There’s really no viable platform anymore where you can just go passively keep up with what friends and acquaintances are doing.
The Facebook general experience is to slowly (or immediately) dislike your family. Instagram's general experience is to like posts from strangers and occasionally your friends. Tiktok's experience is to really disconnect from your social circle and get sucked into shockingly personalized content from strangers.
Facebook's feed is a dying product, Instagram is barely keeping its head above water, and Tiktok is growing so fast the government is worried that it's a national security threat.
Re: Facebook's TikTok-like redesign marks sunset of social networking era
#139This actually makes me pretty sad. For all of Facebook's ills, it did at least do a good job of keeping me connected with friends before it got weird. Same with Instagram. Twitter is fantastic because it helps me discover new people, new interests, new worlds, in a way. TikTok doesn't feel social at all. It feels entirely too performative. Everything on there is a performance. Everything is an act. Everything is simp…
I've been working on an app https://aurdia.com/creators/ to create an ecosystem of communities that provides multiple ways outside of advertisements for the community admins to get paid from the support of their members. I think there needs to be a movement away from people's data being sold as the product from these services to really improve the quality of what we experience on the web.
Re: Facebook's TikTok-like redesign marks sunset of social networking era
#140I feel like half the comments here about "facebook dying" and how "facebook can't compete with tiktok" are missing the big picture about facebook.
For a lot of people, facebook basically is the internet. The same way AOL was a long time ago. Everyone they want to talk to as they go about their day is there. Basically every business in the US that bothers with an online presence at all either has a facebook page or exclusively has a facebook page. Craigslist is being eaten by facebook marketplace. Even Facebook messenger is still a wildly successful chat app and it's like... their 3rd or 4th-place messaging platform.
Facebook has become a sort of digital town square that is a pretty significant part of the economy; the real-world brick-and-mortar economy. Tiktok and instagram are much more recreational.