Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 378 posts

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

#321

Post by tim333 »

brap wrote: post #215

My Facebook feed is about 40% sponsored posts, 30% suggested posts, 30% group posts (usually from very large groups), and then maybe 1% actual friends (and it’s usually just something that they’ve shared or commented on, almost never actual content). If we could go back to the days when 80% of the stuff you see is from friends with the remaining being ads, I would happily use FB more frequently and I’m sure most of m…

https://www.fbpurity.com/ is good to fix that (web only I think). My feed is all friends.

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

#322

Post by gamaralf »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #217
brap wrote: post #215

My Facebook feed is about 40% sponsored posts, 30% suggested posts, 30% group posts (usually from very large groups), and then maybe 1% actual friends (and it’s usually just something that they’ve shared or commented on, almost never actual content). If we could go back to the days when 80% of the stuff you see is from friends with the remaining being ads, I would happily use FB more frequently and I’m sure most of m…

My mastodon feed is 100% actual friends. That reality exists; it's just not evenly distributed yet.

By the way, the article doesn't even mention Mastodon. I gave up social media owned by billionaires, Tweeter mainly, and I am very pleased with Mastodon.

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

#323

Post by OkayPhysicist »

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

Old people move slowly. They meet fewer new people, they get less enthusiastic about the next big thing, they're less interested in new things, hell, they tend to walk slower, too.

So when a new phenomena springs up, say, a new type of social media, the fast moving teenagers and young adults get in first. The feedback loop between people joining and existing members convincing more people to join blows up the popularity. Once it's popular enough, if it can be easily translated to appeal to older people, the older people will move in. (I say "if", because SnapChat managed to hit the massive growth curve part without ever really getting the old people on-board). The old people being on the site is a downside, so eventually a new novelty springs up to attract young people. The older people, who are slower moving, get left behind.

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

#324

Post by paulddraper »

brap wrote: post #215

My Facebook feed is about 40% sponsored posts, 30% suggested posts, 30% group posts (usually from very large groups), and then maybe 1% actual friends (and it’s usually just something that they’ve shared or commented on, almost never actual content). If we could go back to the days when 80% of the stuff you see is from friends with the remaining being ads, I would happily use FB more frequently and I’m sure most of m…

> How did we end up like this?

Optimization.

You've seen SEO, this is Social Media Optimization.

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

#325

Post by kjkjadksj »

brap wrote: post #215

My Facebook feed is about 40% sponsored posts, 30% suggested posts, 30% group posts (usually from very large groups), and then maybe 1% actual friends (and it’s usually just something that they’ve shared or commented on, almost never actual content). If we could go back to the days when 80% of the stuff you see is from friends with the remaining being ads, I would happily use FB more frequently and I’m sure most of m…

People are also probably way more active in middle or high school as well and age out. Without the fodder ad content filling the feed, you’d probably only need to check facebook once every two months to be current, maybe even with less frequency.

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

#326

Post by kjkjadksj »

pizzafeelsright wrote: post #259
nightowl_games wrote: post #128

Social Media started it's down fall ~2008 when the teachers and parents joined facebook. I remember when facebook was _only_ the fellow kids you knew. There were inside jokes, offensive stuff, lots of pure text posts. It was _way_ different. Parents and teachers joined, a couple kids got in trouble for what they posted on facebook, and everyone stopped using it freely.

We call that "the public" and it's why restricted spaces with barriers to entry exist. Allowing Z people to keep X people out of their groups and vice versa.

It was more than the public, it was authority itself. So many people were grounded. Then came the ads shortly after the parents and then it really was over as it was.

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

#327

Post by kjkjadksj »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #150
andrewgioia wrote: post #23

> "How does a brand show up in somebody's DMs or Discord server if they're not invited?" Haberman said. But in many ways, that's the point. People can still go on Instagram to check on their favorite celebrities and influencers, but young people don't want brands and marketers infiltrating the closed communities where they spend most of their time. All people don’t want brands in their closed communities! Anecdotally…

> All people don’t want brands in their closed communities! Since you can't avoid having these ads/brand placed in your preferred social media platform (the users are the product (to be sold to advertisers) and not the customers), the next best thing that you can do as a user is to subvert the undesired brands that you see in your social media stream (e.g. by posting something that makes fun of an ad that you see) to…

All press is good press

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

#328

Post by bozhark »

bmacho wrote: post #173
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 liter…

“catpost half drunk and high”

Is the theme of our online pub

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

#329

Post by kjkjadksj »

Double_a_92 wrote: post #293
andrewgioia wrote: post #23

> "How does a brand show up in somebody's DMs or Discord server if they're not invited?" Haberman said. But in many ways, that's the point. People can still go on Instagram to check on their favorite celebrities and influencers, but young people don't want brands and marketers infiltrating the closed communities where they spend most of their time. All people don’t want brands in their closed communities! Anecdotally…

The main thing for me is that I don't want everything I share with my friends and family to be public. If I e.g. comment on a photo that my brother posted, I absolutely don't want any of his other random acquaintances to also see that. And also the other way around, if my friends comment something on my photo I don't want my brother to see that. Private groups are the only way to avoid that. Or maybe a system like G+…

We can keep reinventing the wheel or we could just realize its all pointless anyhow, right? Why scroll to see the off chance Kevin went on vacation? Just shoot him a text and see what he’s been up to if you care. You don’t need a board or whatever to keep up with the people in your lives. Thats just a lazy way to do it which inevitably invites the ads in, so other ads we are exposed to in society makes us feel its necessary, but its not. Grandma isn’t active on facebook yet she keeps up with everyone she thinks about just fine with the good old land line, probably with a far more deeper connection than a laughing face emoji. Maybe something to think about before looking for the next online refuge.

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

#330

Post by nicbou »

jwells89 wrote: post #183
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…

Much of this has to do with scale. In small communities, interactions are more likely to skew positive, meaningful, and desired. The discussions that rise to the top are those that are most interesting and relevant to the community. In giga-networks like Twitter, you might get some vague sense of a belonged-to community, but the boundaries are fuzzy at best and when posts find their way beyond those boundaries, conte…

Scale and boundaries yes. A community is participative. If everyone is just passing through, the community can't feel familiar and it can't self-police its vibe.
Post reply on HN