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Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

businessinsider.com

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Re: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

#51

Post by nirvael »

Seems like one solution could be to limit the transition from everyday users using for social reasons to brand/content creator users using it for monetisation by capping or limiting the social graph (e.g. a cap at 150 followers/following/friends/whatever you call them). Brands and content creators would have no incentive to join and devalue the network with constant marketing and high-effort posts when they can only reach a maximum of 150 people.

I thought I vaguely remembered a similar idea, and a quick Google search only returns a brand called Path (no longer operational). Maybe there would be renewed interest in the idea.

Re: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

#52

Post by tmikaeld »

piva00 wrote: post #32
azangru wrote: post #3

> no one is posting on social media anymore "Nobody comes here anymore, its too crowded".

I feel this misses just one adjective: "nobody interesting comes here anymore, it's too crowded". A similar feeling I get from overtouristed places, initially they are interesting because of some attraction: the nightlife, the art scene, the food scene, or any combination of these (and other factors I'm too lazy to list) with some quirkiness that attracts people who are interested in the twist. Over time it becomes a…

I can resonate with this, the same applies to cities that are small and friendly. As they grow bigger, crime and scams rise, people are not friendly and more, stores that where quirky and odd close due to competition from low-cost big-store brands..

Re: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

#53

Post by rpastuszak »

buro9 wrote: post #40

It might not be for everyone, but I'm posting more on social media than ever and seeing more engagement than ever... it's on the fediverse where smaller and safer communities are leading to much higher valuable engagement. I'm also finding it a lot more common for people to have multiple profiles / personas... the social one, the work one, the furry one, whatever is how you want to present yourself and to whom, witho…

>I'm posting more on social media than ever and seeing more engagement than ever... it's on the fediverse where smaller and safer communities are leading to much higher valuable engagement.

Precisely, it's signal vs. noise imo. There's an illusion that with more viewers you're more likely to find interesting people, but in practice it's mostly a distraction.

Re: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

#54

Post by pclmulqdq »

zirgs wrote: post #35
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes Early Digg was pretty good. Early Reddit had a lot of good help guides and interesting perspectives. Now on HN. And crossing fingers. (Slashdot seemed to go through the cycle, bottom out, and is ok again?)

Most niche subreddits are still good. Just avoid big/default subs and anything related to politics and culture wars. That's what disappointed me when I tried reddit alternatives. Politics and culture wars were there too, but niche subs were nowhere to be found. They don't seem to understand what made reddit worse in the first place. So I went back to reddit.

The niches basically succeed because they aren't worth it to marketers and "influencers" to shit up with "content." It's awful when a nice community gets too big, because once it does it's now worth money to do that.

I also think this is the magic that forums used to have, and Reddit is basically a convenient platform for forum hosting.

Re: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

#55

Post by orwin »

anonzzzies wrote: post #50
buro9 wrote: post #40

It might not be for everyone, but I'm posting more on social media than ever and seeing more engagement than ever... it's on the fediverse where smaller and safer communities are leading to much higher valuable engagement. I'm also finding it a lot more common for people to have multiple profiles / personas... the social one, the work one, the furry one, whatever is how you want to present yourself and to whom, witho…

Where are you posting? I find so little quality content.

One feed I used to use Twitter for: https://infosec.exchange/public/local

(I never was a fan of Twitter, and I use mastodon like I use Twitter : only when I'm bored, every months or so).

You have to find a feed/subreddit that interest you.

Hell, I even spend more time on stackexchange than I do on YouTube now. It's about niche, and small communities, where read is free but write not so much.

Re: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

#56

Post by lotsofpulp »

piva00 wrote: post #32
azangru wrote: post #3

> no one is posting on social media anymore "Nobody comes here anymore, its too crowded".

I feel this misses just one adjective: "nobody interesting comes here anymore, it's too crowded". A similar feeling I get from overtouristed places, initially they are interesting because of some attraction: the nightlife, the art scene, the food scene, or any combination of these (and other factors I'm too lazy to list) with some quirkiness that attracts people who are interested in the twist. Over time it becomes a…

https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

Re: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

#57

Post by jiofj »

rpastuszak wrote: post #47

0. It's been 15 years and I still don't know how to use Twitter. 1. Most of my online social interactions come from people interacting with my work (writing, code, drawings) through: - my say hi calls ( https://sonnet.io/posts/hi ) - Mastodon Quality > quantity ("the Internet is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is.", i.e. small niches are big enough) Not every company nee…

You don't know how to use twitter but you know how to use mastodon? Aren't they basically the same thing?

Re: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

#58

Post by Madmallard »

c4mpute wrote: post #12

I think this is an eternal cycle. Maybe related to what has been called "enshittification", but not the same: Users will flock to a platform, make it their own. The platform will grow. Then the advertisers, professionals, and hucksters will swoop in, do their thing, and slowly overshadow the old "normal" users. Then old users will leave, leaving a wasteland of ads and glossy shiny. I'd like to call it "glossification…

My brother told me there was an FBI study concluded about Reddit over some recent foreign policy related matter that the percentage of botted posts on the site exceeded 60% in total volume. Seems pretty insane. I wonder what percentage of them cluster in the politically charged subreddits.

Re: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

#59

Post by the_snooze »

wodenokoto wrote: post #20
c4mpute wrote: post #12

I think this is an eternal cycle. Maybe related to what has been called "enshittification", but not the same: Users will flock to a platform, make it their own. The platform will grow. Then the advertisers, professionals, and hucksters will swoop in, do their thing, and slowly overshadow the old "normal" users. Then old users will leave, leaving a wasteland of ads and glossy shiny. I'd like to call it "glossification…

It’s not advertisers that keeps users from posting. Plenty of people doom scroll on Facebook and instagram. ads hasn’t scared users away all that much. It’s that the platforms have been invaded by professionals coupled with an expanded “suggested for you” posts with a little bit of platforms pushing users to grow their graphs endlessly. This creates a combination where posting isn’t really for your friends, it’s for…

>It’s that the platforms have been invaded by professionals coupled with an expanded “suggested for you” posts with a little bit of platforms pushing users to grow their graphs endlessly.

It really shows the hubris and lack of humanity in social media platforms. Instead of letting people naturally figure out who they want to talk to and hear from, social media empowers randos to butt in on private interactions, by design.

Re: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

#60

Post by orwin »

That's why I think Twitter would've died anyway (or deflated).

It was quite hard to consume niche information without posts from outside the community to pop out. The solution to this was to only read tweets with hashtag you wanted to follow, and not what was 'trending', but Twitter interface got a bit in the way. The new Twitter version have a sightly better interface, but much worse content imho (on the hashtags I followed). Also I can't read discussions without login in, and that's just a killer point.

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