TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by baby » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:12 PM UTC

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?

* use the very useful tool to launch other platforms that do not take advantage of the social graph (that you can monetize)

* use the great social graph that you now have to create other useful tools that you can monetize

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

#252

Post by Noe2097 » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:12 PM UTC

decafninja wrote: post #245

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"?

They weren't making money, were they?

I guess it depends what you mean by Evil. Force-pushing ads and sharing updates about people you don't know because it could keep you connected so that you could see more ads, made them profitable. A free service that doesn't push ads can't be.

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

#253

Post by baby » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:13 PM UTC

Noe2097 wrote: post #248

IgorPartola wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

Most people would not be willing to pay for this, QED

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

#254

Post by kritiko » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:15 PM UTC

decafninja wrote: post #245

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"?

To quote Abe Simpson, "I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you..."

Facebook late 2000s was a very utopian vision of the social graph with Obama staffers bragging about the same tactics that were demonized by Cambridge Analytica. If anything, Facebook was more evil because of the data leakage then. The way that they made money then was still ads.

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

#255

Post by ironlake » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:18 PM UTC

_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…

>fediverse needs to go mainstream.

Mastodon has been around for more than five years, and the idea of decentralized social networks long before that. Email, from a user standpoint, was much like Mastodon: a protocol that you consumed with software of your choice. But it was never a great experience for the average user, then gmail made it a great experience. People switched very quickly.

The experience has to be first.

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

#256

Post by skinnymuch » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:18 PM UTC

yieldcrv wrote: post #246

skinnymuch wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 intende…

That’s not how IG or TikTok work. Not as well as FB’s recommendation system years ago. For example I had to gather everyone together from an online community on both platforms even though everyone was linked on Facebook. People weren’t finding recommendations to connect with other community people themselves on those platforms.

> None of these apps are intended to solve your loneliness crisis

What do you mean? Are you okay?

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

#257

Post by nemo44x » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:21 PM UTC

Social media and Websites in general are like TV shows or recording artists - they exist within an era and eventually become legacy/classic and irrelevant to the new youth culture.

No one wants to engage with the same cultural artifacts of their parents or the previous generation. They want to establish themselves as a distinct cultural era and need symbols, etc that are distinct.

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

#258

Post by wussboy » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:22 PM UTC

sidcool wrote: post #197

TikTok (and its clones) is perversely addictive. It's effects are yet to be understood on teenagers and adults. I am glad it's banned in my country. However, Instagram reels and YT shorts remains.

I wonder about the "social media is addictive" end-game. Will we continue to develop new social media apps that are more and more addictive? Can we continue down that path forever? To the maximally addictive social media app? What does that world look like? Does anyone want to live there?

I'm curious how "addictive" became a positive term.

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

#259

Post by neuronic » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #146

timeimp wrote: post #19

I've heard (anecdotally) that the attention span of all the younger users has taken a dramatic shift south. Educators and employers are noticing they cannot keep students / new employees engaged. Makes me wonder what damage is happening, long-term, with all these short bursts of dopamine that TikTok gives it users.

I think we are in for big problems. I graduated from college in 2017 and my adult classmates couldn't even pay attention in class. If adults are hooked then children stand absolutely no chance.

I have a friend who is just at the end of finish her university degree in Germany in a sub field of economics. She cannot calculate with fractions.

She can also not write a 10-paged paper about shallow topics. I don't know what she can do tbh and I am really not trying to be arrogant or shitting on her. She uses her sister, who is smart but easily manipulated by younger sister with big pleading eyes, as a ghostwriter to pass all exams during Corona.

And she really isn't the only one. Some universities are incapable of guaranteeing a minimum baseline of quality of their graduates.

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

#260

Post by powerhour » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #153

> Unlike Twitter, TikTok doesn’t need a critical mass of famous or influential people to use it for its content to prove engaging. I would go further: celebrities often treat Tiktok as just another distribution channel and they seem to flop because of it. Another point: Tiktok has incredibly slick UI/UX. IG used to have this but that's been lost in the constant battle of competing interests. Even the search isn't ter…

IG has like 4 different UIs running at once, depending on where you are in the app. It's bizarre. They're so disjointed they could be released as wholly independent apps.

TikTok really nailed their interface.