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

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

#171

Post by SeanAnderson »

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…

Hello :) I just wanted to let you know that I intend to reach out and say hi to you soon. Your website resonated with me and I think we'll click in our conversation.

I'm travelling for a week come tomorrow, but when I am back in town I'll book something.

Cheers

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

#173

Post by bmacho »

nicbou wrote: post #49

An online community should feel like an online pub. It should have a vibe, some regulars, inside jokes, and a decorum that is somewhat well enforced. They're cosy places where a sense of belonging encourages participation and good behaviour. HN is like that. Small subreddits are like that. Group chats are like that. But now every social media website became like that one pedestrian street with the H&M and the McDonal…

> An online community should feel like an online pub. It should have a vibe, some regulars, inside jokes, and a decorum that is somewhat well enforced. They're cosy places where a sense of belonging encourages participation and good behaviour.

> HN is like that.

HN is the only place that is not a pub: jokes are frowned upon, and even moderated out. Post Valuable Content, or GTFO. You can joke and feel belonging literally everywhere else, catpost half drunk and high, noone cares really, from the small subreddits and discord servers and fb groups to the big subreddits, discord servers, fb groups.

> But now every social media website became like that one pedestrian street with the H&M and the McDonalds: a generic commercial space built around spending money.

We must have a different internet, every other place I know is full of personality and total unique, people repeat the same sets of inside jokes over and over. HN is way the driest and most soulless.

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

#174

Post by margalabargala »

Root_Denied wrote: post #158
Buttons840 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN loves to complain about Discord (with good reason), but Discord is anti-gloss. Small Discord communities can generate a lot of discussion, a lot of user generated content. Discord is also a poor place to do stealth advertising; if you post fake messages about how good your product is, those messages will just get buried and will never show up in a search result; it's not very effective. Things changed this year. W…

My biggest problem with Discord is still more related to support communities (what would have previously been a focused forum or subreddit) moving there, and the subsequent lack of archival of topics and answers for future reference.

This has actually been fixed in the past ~6 months, and quite nicely.

They added the concept of a "forum" channel, where you can have individual support questions, and each one has its own thread that addresses that specific question.

Better yet; the search box and the "make a new post" box are the same box. So if you're starting to ask your question, as you type, it's filtering previous questions based on the words in the question you're trying to ask.

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

#175

Post by MockObject »

pmarreck wrote: post #148

Anecdotal data of 1 but I still post to FB and Twitter (uh, X) fairly often. I never got into IG (too superficial, and I actually prefer discussion). Tried Threads for a couple days and it never latched. Reddit (arguably accidentally) permabanned me across all my accounts after I accidentally used a different login to post to a sub I had been (debatably, mods can be jerks) banned on 1 of my accounts in a long while b…

Reddit completely deleted all your accounts for this accident?

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

#176

Post by kaycebasques »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #153
kaycebasques wrote: post #143

An alternative worth pondering: maybe social media just has a shelf-life of 5-10 years. You get into it during your hyper-social teen years, and then you get bored of it. That doesn't mean it will die. So long as we keep having young people there will be a market. But the social media apps are definitely delusional if they keep projecting that the entire human population will keep using social media all the time. I k…

There are tons of old people on social media though

They are also part of the first generation of mass computer/internet usage, like us. And they were often slower to adopt a smartphone. So they could very well be going through their "first 5-10 years of internet" experience. The fact that they're old right now might just be a distracting factor.

Or maybe it is indeed a hint that social media is more likely to be used by certain age brackets and we can think of it in waves:

* During teen years you use it for 5-20 years

* You get sick of it for 10-20 years

* You enjoy it again in the 50-70 age bracket

* You stop caring again after 70+

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

#177

Post by kouru225 »

mancerayder wrote: post #154

I've been observing a pattern that I've been trying to articulate here and I can best describe as a framework where stuff 'comes to you' whereas the Internet for a long time was an enabler of 'you go to stuff'. The pendulum swung back, thanks to ad tech, and centralization, that have or are trying to orchestrate a culture shift. Okay, here are some concrete examples. 1. Television/cable (absent a TiVo type device), t…

There was an early art collective called the videofreex that defined what you’re talking about in terms of channel direction. Basically they defined media in the 1980s as being one-way channels where there was no response from the audience whatsoever, and they saw this as a form of control that strengthened class divides. They were excited about creating a two-way channel communication network because they thought it would break down the social hierarchy.

I think what you’re talking about is sort of like the recreation of the one-way channel within a two-way channel. Technically we can respond, but the amount of power our voice has has been lessened dramatically over the years.

I talked to one of the members of the videofreex recently (which is how I know about them), and his attitude was the classic “bittersweet nostalgia for my overly idealistic youth” attitude. He still thought he had a point, but he also felt like he underestimated A) the amount of problems that would come from disinformation and B) the amount of control that the old powers would still retain. I think he saw the structure of the media as reinforcing the social hierarchy, but now it’s looking like the structure of the social hierarchy was what was reinforcing the structure of the media… or maybe just a little feedback loop between the two… anyway the point I’m making is that just cause the media changed doesn’t mean the social hierarchy has.

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

#178

Post by bazmattaz »

matsemann wrote: post #29

I posted a lot on facebook in high school. Had maybe 50 friends there, like my classmates, soccer team etc. Posted at least once a day what I was doing, same did everyone else, and we discussed in during lunch next day. Or I would post a general "going to the soccer field, just join in", and we'll be a group there. Then joining university and getting new groups of friends, it didn't feel relevant to "spam" everyone w…

This is why I love subreddits on Reddit. I want a slice of you, like say I was to discuss topics like cloud hosting or vinyl records. I don’t really care what else you’re into I want to connect on these topics we have in common.

As much as the Reddit website and app and overall experience is garbage the communities can be good

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

#179

Post by buildsjets »

tmikaeld wrote: post #52
piva00 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

RIP Seattle.

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

#180

Post by mancerayder »

Liquix wrote: post #169
mancerayder wrote: post #154

I've been observing a pattern that I've been trying to articulate here and I can best describe as a framework where stuff 'comes to you' whereas the Internet for a long time was an enabler of 'you go to stuff'. The pendulum swung back, thanks to ad tech, and centralization, that have or are trying to orchestrate a culture shift. Okay, here are some concrete examples. 1. Television/cable (absent a TiVo type device), t…

Excellently written. A nitpick on your final point: > Phones are an extension of our organ senses now. How will a world in which Things Come to Us and We Dont Go to Things anymore affect us cognitively long-term? This may be looking at it backwards. Rampant smartphone addiction and overuse begins to shape all things in a "medium is the message" type of effect. The less need there is to physically "Go to the Thing" -…

So you're saying we're allowing ourselves to be victimized by it via laziness ?

That's certainly true, if that is what you mean.

I guess the part I didn't speak about was: some people value independent thought more than others, and I think for those that do, the Things Come to You paradigm is even more frustrating.

My concern is that children are growing up in the Come to You dynamic. Flip side: they can generate content and release it in the wild, something that couldn't be done even in the 90's prior to IG, TikTok, YouTube, etc.

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