11–20 of 632 posts
All the result of A/B tests. Everything will converge to give you an engaging experience for most people. The only not too bad student is reddit which lets you keep using their older UI if you want to. But everything else is pushing new driven by A/B tests UI optimized for engagement.
All the result of A/B tests. Everything will converge to give you an engaging experience for most people. The only not too bad student is reddit which lets you keep using their older UI if you want to. But everything else is pushing new driven by A/B tests UI optimized for engagement.
The TikTok-ification of advertising supported platforms is terrible, but makes sense to me. LinkedIn pivoted from making money on subscriptions and fees for job postings to ads, which mean the leading drivers are 'engagement' e.g. time you spend doom scrolling on their platform. This will end in disaster for the platform as a place to find jobs or employees. Netflix I understand much less. They make money from subscr…
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The TikTok-ification of advertising supported platforms is terrible, but makes sense to me. LinkedIn pivoted from making money on subscriptions and fees for job postings to ads, which mean the leading drivers are 'engagement' e.g. time you spend doom scrolling on their platform. This will end in disaster for the platform as a place to find jobs or employees. Netflix I understand much less. They make money from subscr…
or, if you're presented with more random 'clips' or movie snippets, this turns on your gambling reward center. It's like a slot machine - where you "win" by finding a good series to watch after searching. And because this is random, you end up getting addicted to looking thru the list/snippet, trying to encounter a perfect series to watch.
If you're designing a consumer-oriented web service like Netflix or Spotify or Instagram, you will probably add in some user analytics service, and use the insights from that analysis to inform future development. However, that analysis will aggregate its results over all your users, and won't pick out the enthusiasts, who will shape discourse and public opinion about your service. Consequently, your results will be dominated by people who don't really have an opinion, and just take whatever they're given.
Think about web browsers. The first popular browser was Netscape Navigator; then, Internet Explorer came onto the scene. Mozilla Firefox clawed back a fair chunk of market share, and then Google Chrome came along and ate everyone's lunch. In all of these changes, most of the userbase didn't really care what browser they were using: the change was driven by enthusiasts recommending the latest and greatest to their less-technically-inclined friends and family.
So if you develop your product by following your analytics, you'll inevitably converge on something that just shoves content into the faces of an indiscriminating userbase, because that's what the median user of any given service wants. (This isn't to say that most people are tasteless blobs; I think everyone is a connoisseur of something, it's just that for any given individual, that something probably isn't your product.) But who knows - maybe that really is the most profitable way to run a tech business.
I'm by no means a conspiracy theorist, however as I've risen the ranks of my chosen technical field I see more and more that what George Carlin said was really poignant. "You don't need a formal conspiracy when incentives align"[0].
And incentives align really easily.
Every company has some form of market analysis going on. CEO's will be invited to rub shoulders with the same groups of people. Conglomerates will have information sharing of some kind across all subsidiaries.
Everyone is acting independently, but towards the same goal. It's actually quite shocking to have been part of (and hearing about) meetings between CEOs where "new information from CMK (consumer market knowledge) indicates that smaller dev teams all onsite are the best way to do things" - and everyone gets the same "information" at the same time, and thus the entire market moves in that direction, as if it was a fixed horse race and they were acting on a secret tip they heard from their uncle...
I'm a bit counter-culture in my missive, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, but a little nudge across a limited population seems to be enough - and it exists.
Controversially: Blackrocks DEI initiatives are perfect public example of what I mean, no matter if you are pro or con, you can't deny the impact.
"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." This line is especially silly when making B2B products, especially very expensive enterprise ones. It's often used to justify building "great ideas" from some exec or overzealous PM/engineer over concrete asks from customers. Like you really think that a team of 20 experienced people paying >$1M to help run their multi-billion dollar busine…
I have seen it personally ... dozens? of times? Its the reasons startups can even succeed at all given the enormous momentum and cash reserves of these bigger companies - their goals, management, approach - it all becomes more diffuse and poorly executed.
The TikTok-ification of advertising supported platforms is terrible, but makes sense to me. LinkedIn pivoted from making money on subscriptions and fees for job postings to ads, which mean the leading drivers are 'engagement' e.g. time you spend doom scrolling on their platform. This will end in disaster for the platform as a place to find jobs or employees. Netflix I understand much less. They make money from subscr…
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NFLX/netflix/net-i...
Maybe it is winning despite what Netflix leaders are choosing to do, and maybe their choices will cause them to falter soon. And maybe Netflix could be doing better than they are. But it is always easier to pontificate than execute.
I don’t buy Netflix solely because they don’t integrate with the search in the iOS/macOS TV app.
Unfortunately, based on media trends before streaming and Netflix was a thing, lots of people like C grade productions. If you recall, “reality” TV shows were taking over in the 2000s. People like the Tiktok-ificiation (or otherwise lowering of quality).
The TikTok-ification of advertising supported platforms is terrible, but makes sense to me. LinkedIn pivoted from making money on subscriptions and fees for job postings to ads, which mean the leading drivers are 'engagement' e.g. time you spend doom scrolling on their platform. This will end in disaster for the platform as a place to find jobs or employees. Netflix I understand much less. They make money from subscr…
Because regardless of whether or not the business model depends upon it, investors have been trained that “engagement” is inherently good quality for their investments to have. Increase engagement, stonk price go up.