11–20 of 102 posts
I never really got why facebook was considered interesting. I made an account because I was pressured by some female friends into doing so but I never log on it (at least 5 months). I know I'm not the norm but still, I feel like facebook is just a fad and that people will get bored of posting every second of their life onto the internet eventually.
This will weed out users who just don't care; it will give more information to advertisers as well.
Oh and what's that? 75 cents per month actually ends up tripling their income! (if they now get $9 per year off the seventy-five cents, plus the same four in ad revenue.)
Anyway if even 75 cents per month is too much, then they can go ahead and make OEM deals etc for a facebook sticker and do like Microsoft did. Or give it away with cans of coke. One in twenty wins a year of facebook.
Or, you know, do what people expect and roll into the price of a cell phone.
Just some thoughts...
FB seems to get into a negative press spiral lately because of the underperforming IPO...suddenly its all just a fad because people want to read about this new super company failing... But the truth is, it still has CRAZY numbers in terms of Daily/Weekly/Monthly Active users and average time spent on the site. Its a behemoth and will not fall!
Every time a Facebook usage topic comes up there's the usual round of scorn usually backed up by a strange display of plumage involving the sentence, "I just deleted my facebook yesterday/last month/last year/never used it."
And that's okay. But I want to point out to my fellow HN-goers why facebook is so wonderful. There's also a note about privacy at the bottom[1] since that seems to be a big reason people stay away. I feel as if a lot of people here missed the point and doesn't understand what the average person sees in this system. I'll try to relay my experience in the hopes that you see the utility.
To most people, especially a shy person, the usefulness of the site is astronomical.
Among others I am friends with my boss, my mother, my little cousins. Facebook lets shy people like me keep in touch with a massive amount of people where I can write them the modern equivalent of letters very quickly and easily, as well as let them broadcast their life's updates to me. I can keep in touch with all manner of people. I love writing letters, people love getting letters. Facebook is not far off.
Without facebook, I'd have no idea cousin X is having a baby, or that Y is having apartment trouble that I can help them with, or that Z got a new game we can play together, or person A is considering selling their car, and so on.
If I meet someone at an event and really hit it off (romantically or not), I can go on facebook the next day and look them up by name and add them. No exchanging phone numbers or emails or anything like that. I just search for them and find them. In college it was enormously useful for making friends and I still find it useful now that I've graduated.
I made a page for my hometown (90K population city in NH). I broadcast events going on around the city (fireworks, beer festival, city meetings). In this way I help my community learn about the goings-on of the town. It's a surprisingly popular page (more popular than the local newspaper's facebook page).
These functions in times past were done with the laborous process of making a million letters or phone calls or in many cases (like my hometown page) scarcely made or not made at all.
Literally, facebook is a modern "An open letter to my friends" system. And it's great at it.
~~~~~~
Okay that's off my chest.
Sadly as of late its getting a little less great at its function. A lot of the reason for the downturn in usage, sadly, is probably due to the fact that every ad, every sponsored story and sponsored "like" is adding to a signal/noise ratio that will make people frown. It's a shame that facebook's financial success as the model is right now is directly competing with its utility[2], but oh-well. We may have to sigh a bit more, but its still extremely useful to the casual user and has the usage stats to show it.
[1] I don't think privacy alone is enough to negate the utility of fbook. All of my privacy options are on the lowest possible setting. I treat anything that occurs on the site as if it were public. I don't see why not, I'm not going to pretend that photos of myself or my wall postings are anywhere near interesting enough to hide. In fact I'm not sure why people who put things on facebook want privacy at all. I never worry that something I say might be picked up on by the wrong person because I'd never say anything that I wouldn't want the world to hear.
[2] It may be worth pointing out that I love facebook but would never invest in it for a few reasons, and this is one of them. One could argue Google ads make Google searches more useful. Facebook ads, as they are today, directly impinge on the utility of the platform. But thats a separate topic
I never really got why facebook was considered interesting. I made an account because I was pressured by some female friends into doing so but I never log on it (at least 5 months). I know I'm not the norm but still, I feel like facebook is just a fad and that people will get bored of posting every second of their life onto the internet eventually.
Long distant relationships. My family and close friends are mostly in Texas while I'm in the Bay Area. I like keeping track of their lives...
I think facebook should charge 75 cents per month to use it. This will weed out users who just don't care; it will give more information to advertisers as well. Oh and what's that? 75 cents per month actually ends up tripling their income! (if they now get $9 per year off the seventy-five cents, plus the same four in ad revenue.) Anyway if even 75 cents per month is too much, then they can go ahead and make OEM deals…
The 30% will start using a Facebook alternative, and then once they're all settled in, they will start poaching everyone else from Facebook, and get them to use this new "cooler" social network. When companies lose their early adopters, it's over. They just don't know it until a few years later when the negative numbers start showing up, and it's too late to fix the problem.
I think facebook should charge 75 cents per month to use it. This will weed out users who just don't care; it will give more information to advertisers as well. Oh and what's that? 75 cents per month actually ends up tripling their income! (if they now get $9 per year off the seventy-five cents, plus the same four in ad revenue.) Anyway if even 75 cents per month is too much, then they can go ahead and make OEM deals…
I never really got why facebook was considered interesting. I made an account because I was pressured by some female friends into doing so but I never log on it (at least 5 months). I know I'm not the norm but still, I feel like facebook is just a fad and that people will get bored of posting every second of their life onto the internet eventually.
Long distant relationships. My family and close friends are mostly in Texas while I'm in the Bay Area. I like keeping track of their lives...
I'm logged out of FB at work for productivity reasons. I read FB probably about twice a day. Once in the morning and once at night. I'm not missing much.
My status updates have gone from about 1/day a couple of years ago, to about 1/week now. Even though I've blocked all apps, etc., I find FB to be too noisy. The only thing I like about FB is that I can keep track of friends' events, like babies, marriages, breakups, trips, etc.
What is NOT noisy is:
* Path (just my close friends)
* Pair (just my girlfriend)
* Google+ (the "what's hot" news feed is actually pretty interesting)