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TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

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Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#241

Post by decafninja »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #180
captainmuon wrote: post #77

Modern social media leaves a very big gap - that was filled by old Facebook, or to some extent MySpace: The "people directory" where basically everybody has a page, and you can see what friends are doing, or look up acquaintances and strangers. For me, social media feeds were never addicting, but more tedious. I found visiting friends pages and sometimes finding an update, sometimes not, like a slot machine, more add…

Personally I think Instagram (The core product, not stories or reels) is to today what Facebook and MySpace where back in the day. Obviously though that is being eroded away by Instagrams lack of confidence and insistence to fight TikTok, which I also find strange I mean yeah its a vertical feed of video but really why you go to it is really different for why you go to IG, TikTok has more in common with YouTube than…

I think it sort of used to be, but now it too, has passed on.

Once Instagram Stories started more and more real friends started just posting Stories clips and less photos and updates. Now my feed has all my friends just posting random Stories clips, and actual photos are dominated by advertising and influencers.

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#242

Post by tempe1h1 »

_fat_santa wrote: post #231
baby wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "people directory" I think this is Facebook's biggest issue: they moved from being a very useful tool to being the app that tries to drive traffic and engagement so much that it becomes less useful. I think they should refocus back on being a useful tool to keep track of friends, and keep in touch with people you meet, and then do the other stuff they want to do separately. Facebook IS still useful, but because…

The problem I see is that kind of stuff is just not profitable anymore. IMO it shouldn't be a company like FB running a people directory, it should be something mastodon. The utopian future I would like for social media is if we had a protocol for a people directory social network. It would function in much the same way as facebook pages or your myspace page. Most users will just sign up for a service, technical user…

I see this as a consequence of the overarching ideology of markets and capitalism standing in the way of humans exploiting the full potential of digital and internet technologies.

at this point this is a social problem to be solved politically

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#243

Post by Balgair »

wizofaus wrote: post #54
klodolph wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been saying that for centuries or longer. Kids these days have shorter attention spans. People said it about millennials, about gen-x, about baby boomers. There’s a record of people complaining that kids are ruined by their reliance on writing things on paper, rather than slate. There’s a record of Socrates complaining that the written word is ruining people’s memory. The record exists because Plato wrote…

Doesn't mean it's not true. There's an argument that given the world's population today we should be churning out geniuses (of the caliber of Newton or Einstein or Beethoven etc,.) all the time now, but the fact we're not suggests there's something about the social environment we grow up in that strongly discourages the level of sustained commitment to a particular specialty neccessary for genius to develop. Having s…

Woah, woah, who says we're not churning out geniuses? The rate of scientific research is doubling every ~18 months[0]. The arts have had an explosion of growth and creativity in the last decades. Some of the best musicians ever are currently living. Some of the greatest revolutions in science are currently on going. I mean, we got the vaccine to covid worked out over a weekend!

[0] https://www.industrytap.com/knowledge-doubling-every-12-mont...

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#244

Post by imgabe »

stereolambda wrote: post #127
askafriend wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why default to blaming the students/employees? The educational system and employers have a responsibility to be engaging and enriching if they want interest and passion back from their students/employees. I'm not saying there's no problem with overconsumption of cheap media. But I think we're too quick to jump to blaming individuals. We can just as much flip the question around and ask what educators and employers ar…

I don't think we need to think of it on the basis of blame at all, on the societal level. Individually, I think you have a better life if you have or learn conscious control of your attention. But on a large scale, if the population doesn't have immunity, it is a problem to deal with somehow. Either by "engaging" or changing the structures of institutions. But we have to have some methods of doing this, which are har…

Hmm, we kind of did deal with smog by requiring everyone to get their own air cleaning device (catalytic converters). They didn’t have to design and build it themselves though.

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#245

Post by decafninja »

captainmuon wrote: post #77

Modern social media leaves a very big gap - that was filled by old Facebook, or to some extent MySpace: The "people directory" where basically everybody has a page, and you can see what friends are doing, or look up acquaintances and strangers. For me, social media feeds were never addicting, but more tedious. I found visiting friends pages and sometimes finding an update, sometimes not, like a slot machine, more add…

This.

Is such a business model like Facebook circa late 2000s simply not viable? How did Facebook make money back then before they turned "evil"?

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#246

Post by yieldcrv »

skinnymuch wrote: post #233
yieldcrv wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the current/younger people all have the different apps that provide that already People understand that their social graph is optionally transportable They can recreate it on any app just by putting in their phone number or letting the app access their contacts

Right so this is all assuming you have people’s numbers. Which was my whole point. You may not have that. I said “other people’s info” This is no different than when gen X or older millennials were kids on different apps too like IM apps. Which weren’t the same as FB early day either.

its assuming that you have one person’s contact info who is tangentially associated to the other people (number or username or email etc) or that they have yours.

Then you get recommended all the same people and can also browse the same people’s friends.

The recommendation and browsing is the same as Facebook’s early days, the same as now, and very different from instant messaging apps.

None of these apps are intended to solve your loneliness crisis. Recreating the mid aughts wont do it either. You have to be proactive in getting a variety of people’s contact info by interacting with a variety of people.

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#247

Post by ghaff »

robertlagrant wrote: post #239
ghaff wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's one specific communications channel. You mostly don't socially call people out of the blue outside of a very tight circle of friends and family--and cell phone numbers can't be looked up in general. However, many people--especially professionals--have LinkedIn profiles. And many in general can be searched on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Given someone's name and maybe a little more information about them, you…

The point being was there used to just be a big book with everyone in it, and now there isn't, and probably never could be again with how we all now feel about and regulate data privacy.

Do you honestly think that you can't find out a heck of a lot more about people in general quite easily than you could in the white pages? (Which also required you to know the town/city where they lived.) For one thing, if you own a house, that's a matter of public record. Fortunately most of the deep search tools have gone behind paywalls but it's still trivial to find out a lot about someone especially if they have an uncommon name or you already know something about them.

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#248

Post by Noe2097 »

IgorPartola wrote: post #173
baby wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "people directory" I think this is Facebook's biggest issue: they moved from being a very useful tool to being the app that tries to drive traffic and engagement so much that it becomes less useful. I think they should refocus back on being a useful tool to keep track of friends, and keep in touch with people you meet, and then do the other stuff they want to do separately. Facebook IS still useful, but because…

But how would you make as much money as FB does off a very useful tool?

Probably the money that FB "generates" is literally insane, and doesn't make sense for a single company to generate.

Possibly a mastodon based solution where users pay a small recurring fee for server management and some R&D and offering privacy, could generate enough benefits for a company (or companies) to strive.

FB (among others) made us forget the sense of scale and the value of things, including the value of privacy and brain time. I would rather pay today from 1 to 5 USD a month for a service that works, where I can share my kid's pictures with my direct family and only them, with no ads.

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#249

Post by baby »

_fat_santa wrote: post #231
baby wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "people directory" I think this is Facebook's biggest issue: they moved from being a very useful tool to being the app that tries to drive traffic and engagement so much that it becomes less useful. I think they should refocus back on being a useful tool to keep track of friends, and keep in touch with people you meet, and then do the other stuff they want to do separately. Facebook IS still useful, but because…

The problem I see is that kind of stuff is just not profitable anymore. IMO it shouldn't be a company like FB running a people directory, it should be something mastodon. The utopian future I would like for social media is if we had a protocol for a people directory social network. It would function in much the same way as facebook pages or your myspace page. Most users will just sign up for a service, technical user…

> IMO it shouldn't be a company like FB running a people directory, it should be something mastodon

It really is not a technological problem, it's a "how do you get everyone to sign up" problem, which FB has solved. I don't think we'll see another company solve this in a very long time, unless they hit the jackpot while really focusing on creating a USEFUL product for their users.

Re: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

#250

Post by wussboy »

linuxhansl wrote: post #187

I long stopped be a user of Facebook. In the beginning I liked the easy way it afforded me to keep in contact with friends and acquaintances. Then it included more and more "other" stuff, and I just lost interest in it. Shame really. In the beginning it was so useful and I honestly did not mind being shown some ads in exchange for that. But now my data would be used not only to selects ads but also the other content,…

I log in to Facebook about once a year, and my feed is just a panel of outrage. It's exhausting just thinking about it. But I do genuinely miss the early days when it was just the stuff my friends and family were doing, a great way to keep in touch. But no more.
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