211–220 of 484 posts
I guess Meta must be knowing what they're doing? I'm sure they are basing their decisions entirely on actual analytics and A/B testing results. If the numbers say users are moving towards videos, away from photos, than that's what they will cater to. That's why public emotions won't sway them.
"Engagement" is the metric and the incredibly obviously stupid problem with it as your optimisation goal that is apparently ungraspable by the leadership of every single social network.
It infects everything down even to Google search rankings.
If you can quickly and easily find the info you want then that reduces "engagement" and that is bad, apparently.
I'm likely not in the majority here, but my average usage of Instagram these days is me scrolling through my feed for about 20 seconds before getting frustrated and closing the app. All the ads and things I never opted into seeing make it an unpleasant and uninteresting experience. I was far more engaged when it was just a reverse chronological timeline of images from people I follow.
Theory on facebook failure/Google failure to innovate: They have the highest leetcode standards out of FAANG. As does Snap. They hire people that basically memorized computer science algorithms. And so their employees are bookish, not innovative people. Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon do not have the same issues with creating new products. Keith Rabois (top VC), mentioned that FB has always prioritized optimization over…
That is as far from truth as it can get. The problem in companies that fail to innovate almost always has the same problem: management. How companies are run has a significant impact on how much they can innovate. Even if you are willing to take massive bets as the management team, if the bets aren’t good enough, it’s going to be hard to innovate.
Apple has a top down innovation chain where goals and direction are decided by higher ups, while Amazon has bottom up innovation where people are encouraged to build. But the common theme in both is the ability to identify and nurture big ideas by the management.
It's interesting that they don't care, it's a Marie Antoinette-esque attitude to their lifeblood, and ultimately what will end their dominance. The truth is they converted a free service into a pay service (the gas-lights creators and businesses into paying for visibility). The visibility, even when paid for is not very fruitful for many as well... If you run a small business like a restaurant in the US, but get 40,0…
I can't see IRC coming back as there's just slightly too much friction for the common person to get up and running. I could see websites coming back (I mean like the way people used to actually browse websites instead of social media). The problem with websites at the moment is discoverability. Google's SEO is a major roadblock to this at the moment. A way around it might be a "web of discoverability", with meaningfu…
Theory on facebook failure/Google failure to innovate: They have the highest leetcode standards out of FAANG. As does Snap. They hire people that basically memorized computer science algorithms. And so their employees are bookish, not innovative people. Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon do not have the same issues with creating new products. Keith Rabois (top VC), mentioned that FB has always prioritized optimization over…
> They have the highest leetcode standards out of FAANG. As does Snap. They hire people that basically memorized computer science algorithms. I find this naive, as if coders have a say on the product. The jobs in big companies tend to be very boring and actually simple since their core product is already there and all these people simply maintain and steer it based on the data. IMHO the difference is simply in their…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Instead companies like Amazon and Apple are obsessed with generating real world value for the customers and let financial value follow. While I would argue that even Apple is mostly about execution not innovation (many of Apple innovations had been around for a while, but apple took execution to a different level), but Amazon?! What are the big Amazon innovations? The one click checkout? Having pushed selling books…
Heard of AWS, Alexa, One click checkout, Amazon Prime? They literally invented cloud computing
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When Twitter forced the algorithmic timeline on people, someone tweeted: "Is the algorithm based what everyone else likes, or what I like? Because I hate what everyone else likes, and I don't know what I like."
I don't have TikTok, but for 2 years this is what I've been hearing from people who love it. They figured out a way to show you exactly what you're interested in, without you giving them any specific input There have been many articles about the phenomenon of the "For You Page"[1][2]. But the funny part is Meta sees this and figures - people are looking at videos, we'll do videos. And not - people are seeing what the…
Learning the things you don't like is important. It's much more pleasant experience when you are not exposed to the stuff you don't like. Unlike Twitter, the stuff you don't like doesn't mean things you disagree with. You very well might not like politics, TikTok keeps you out of the culture war then.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ones coming up with products are usually executives looking to advance their career. e.g. everyone I know who worked on Google Stadia who cared readily pointed out all the problems from idea to implementation. Management & product design waved off the concerns, said they were in for the long haul, and that the product would be a huge success regardless. And then they got cold feet after realizing how much of a fl…
I've had a couple young people complain to me about leetcode interviews at Google. I replied that they could spend a couple weeks going over the leetcode books, and if that was what it took to get a $250,000 job, then that will be the best investment of time they'd ever make. Besides, one cannot help but learn programming things from examining leetcode solutions. Google probably also wants to hire motivated people, a…
I don't doubt that a major reason for asking these types of questions, as opposed to an IQ test or something, is that it is basically illegal in the US to do so.