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TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

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411–420 of 464 posts

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

#411

Does anyone here remember Path - the social network for close friends? Mobile first, beautiful UI, some sort of limit on how many connections / followers / friends you can have. Would seem a perfect time for a revival of this

Path was so beautiful. My friends didn’t care for it though since no one was on it

same. You had a get a cohort together off platform and all agree to use it. Beautiful app, they should simply revive it, the moment for it is now

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

#412
post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see how introducing flashy short videos that produce a dopamine hit in the easily amused is going to grow Facebook I can easily see this pivot lead to a short term growth, but I don't get why this metric is so blindly trusted, when it's clearly more complex. (If there is one thing I really appreciate about engineers, is that most of us understand trade-offs, and our null-hypothesis is that almost everything…

> Now, Tiktok has come along and likely by chance found an even more powerful doom-scroller, the dopamine 9000 I don't think older people who were raised in a longer attention span world (without even flashy jump cuts on TV) will find short attention span videos appealing. I could be wrong. One thing that would tell me I'm wrong is if there was a robust amount of people over 40 on TikTok. I don't have that data, but…

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

#413
post #329
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO Facebook used to be perfect, and can still be if they split the content platform from the close social networking platform. Not because you are forced to use the content platform, but I think it drives people away. I got a close friend who deleted his facebook account and I can't find him anymore, nobody knows how to contact him, I went twice to his city and couldn't reach out to him.

LinkedIn would be the best replacement for a peoples directory because it has a certain professional air to it. Facebook initially was a casual platform similar to Instagram.

Always used fb for that and it was always great up until some point. Linkedin always felt spammy “hey pay for this feature” and only for professionals

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

#414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, there are plenty of people born these days who presumably have the capacity for genius of the greats of the past. And yes, the sheer number of scientists working today, with access to knowledge and facilities far beyond what was available centuries ago is producing a stream of research and increased scientific understanding that is far greater than it's ever been. None of that invalidates the hypothesis (which…

Wait. How can you disentangle the distractions of the world we live in from the result that there are more top-tier people working today? Saying that the variables are independent isn't enough. I'd say that the null hypothesis is that great communications technology is the root cause of both distractions and more 'geniuses'. You can't have one without the other to my eyes.

It's a testable hypothesis if you can get enough people to agree that their kids should be banned access to all such distractions (and such a ban to remain in place into adulthood). Obviously they'd still need access to electronically available information. Whether discussion forums/messaging apps count as distractions might be a grey area. I honestly don't know what the result would be, or how long it would take to determine the outcome one way or another.

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

#415
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely Tiktok will change to do exactly this in the future, that's what they all do.

I don't think they will. Tiktok is a creator platform. More audience is better. Instagram has left a huge gap by forcing everyone to login. IMO, Instagram and Twitter are using the wrong metrics which ignore non-login users. They focus on converting users to logged-in. They don't focus on delivering maximum value. For downloading, I can see that go away though.

Twitter and reddit are doing this. I imagine youtube make it a pain to look at content as well if you’re not signed in

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

#416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

> None of these apps are intended to solve your loneliness crisis > What do you mean? Are you okay? There is a well documented loneliness epidemic. Thought you were referring to it inadvertently by fawning over an old form of technology.

Yeah I agree there’s a documented loneliness epidemic. You used “your” the first time with me. Which I found strange. Looking now, I seem to have engaged in assuming bad faith. My apologies.

Tho no I wasn’t referring to it in terms of comparing the aughts with now. I do believe in the loneliness epidemic. However not that it has gotten so much worse in 15 years.

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

#417
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If people aren’t willing to pay for it, its either a social service or it shouldn’t exist. Facebook continued existence is subsidized by extremely lax regulation in the advertising industry.

Most people do not agree with your extreme opinion

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

#418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At one point it was estimated that Facebook gets $40/month in advertising per US user - how do you then reconcile that with you only being willing to pay $1-5?

I think this is why youtube without ads is sooo expensive.

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

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

Recommendation engines break or change every sprint on every app, so I am surprised your community had this issue, but not sure your conclusions are really the direction of these platforms. Either way, I don't see those as problems or a market gap people want. Many groups just share a google form or spreadsheet. Accurate observation that this is something that would work even if we were just using old instant message…

The community didn’t have an issue themselves. They weren’t going out of their way at all to find one another. I have an interest in connecting the community members though. What I saw from many years for myself and based on who others follow/are social media friends with is that the FB connections were far higher than the IG or tiktok ones.

Not all communities or links of people will be the same. For example if someone is a 20-something who went to university, they won’t run into any issues yet, they are too young and experienced the world mostly being with a ton of other cohort people.

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

#420
post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IG doesn’t have any of the people directory. It’s heavily focused on bigger brands, profiles, influencers, and seeing random stuff from these entities I have no personal relation with. Facebook of old was like what the OP was saying. IG is only marginally like that with friends pic posts. This is regardless of whatever tiktok stuff since I don’t use IG much for the same reasons as OP.

Facebook was popular in the era when it wasn't used as a people directory however. It was used as instagram is currently until older people came in and the website became very commercialized.

I don’t literally mean a people director but closer to that than what IG is. Are you referring gtfo Facebook pre 2008? That’s a small time period to look at since that’s when it exploded in popularity and would otherwise be a relatively quaint site and company if it stayed the way it was in 2006, 2007. It still remained close enough to the same for me until maybe 2012 at earliest.
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