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The Facebook experiment has failed

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Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#181

Post by [deleted] »

mattpardee wrote: post #44
mindcrime wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and I have tuned it I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the vast, vast majority of Facebook users (like, 90%+ is my SWAG) don't do any tuning at all. I'm also going to guess that a large percentage of users "friend" people they aren't friends with in real-life, due to just "shared common interest" or whatever. IF both of these assumptions hold, then the scenario the author of TFA is painting, could well…

Good lord, man. How do you deal with people you meet in real life? Do you walk around responding "What you just said is irrelevant to me."? What if the algorithm you think you want is actually the opposite of what you might find interesting tomorrow? Most people are complex, interesting creatures finding new inspirations and communicating them on a daily basis. People grow, change, they find out what is interesting t…

[deleted]

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#182

Post by smith7018 »

graue wrote: post #35

People really just don't seem to understand that experiences with social media are specific to the individual. I guess it's understandable. I see the same Google Maps as everyone else does. I see the same Hacker News as everyone else who visits HN. But Facebook isn't like that. Your Facebook timeline is based entirely on your friends and how you interact with Facebook. And so, every few weeks it seems, we get these p…

Thank you.

I'm beginning to wonder if I'm the only person out there who has used the "unfriend" button before. I've deleted hundreds of people; many of whom I only met for one night 5 years ago or didn't even talk to way back in high school. Now, my Facebook feed has content that only features people I care to hear from and "interest pages," which is sorta meh. It's really not this social media wasteland I keep reading about?

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#183

Post by daigoba66 »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #169

Facebook is performance art. It's a phonebook of people I lost contact with many years ago. It's also a quasi-broken emailing list program. It might be a decent advertising platform for small businesses. Don't know. It's not a news feed. It's not stories relevant to me. It's not a way to actually have friends. It's not a place where people create things and share (mostly). People might think it's those things. Hell,…

In the beginning (circa 2003-2005 when I was in college) it was a tool for only your peers. Granted at the time it was little more than a directory and event management tool. But it served a useful purpose back then. In my opinion the jumping-the-shark moment was either when it was opened to the world or when "Apps" were introduced.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#184

Post by gavingmiller »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #178
joshAg wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

seems you stumbled on the secret of keeping a good online community: don't let a person's contacts exceed the network's dunbar number[1]. non-default subreddits can still be quite good, but many/most/all of the default subreddits are wastelands ravaged by a silent majority of up- and down-voters while the huddled masses of commenters cling together for safety. of course, there's the same phenomenon within the comment…

Path tried that in the social network format but it doesn't seem to be catching on.

Speculating here, but that's probably due to the fact that small and private isn't compatible with VC money.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#185

Post by ChuckMcM »

jblz wrote: post #161
nostromo wrote: post #51

Lately I've noticed something odd. When I find a story I find interesting, I email it to some of my closest friends and we talk about it in email. It feels very 2003, but it works and feels more private and intimate. Similarly, when I take a picture I want to share with my family, I sms it to them. Facebook is still great, but it's different than what it used to be. It's (for me) evolved into my less-close friends' v…

"It's (for me) evolved into my less-close friends' vacations and babies and memes." This. Further, I think Fb serves a very important purpose in my life: it has supplanted any need or desire to attend a high school reunion. I can easily find out "what you've been up to" if I care in the slightest. Also, upvoted b/c babies are cute :)

I've wondered about this as well. When I was going through my 20's there came big splits in my friends pool in terms of common interests, first the division of friends who were married and those who weren't, and then the much bigger split of people with kids and those without. I noticed that my focus changed at those times as did others and the folks who weren't married or didn't have kids were really not interested in the stuff I was focused on.

We now have a generation of people going through this with Facebook and it doesn't surprise me if suddenly one group of friends is not as relevant as they used to be, and that a system like Facebook can't easily pick that up.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#186

Post by breakupapp »

Facebook evolves. It used to be a directory of school mates, then a place for self expression, then an amplification system and address book, and then a messaging platform and identity layer. Who knows what it's going to be next but one thing's for sure. It won't stay the same.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#187

Post by xtracto »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #169

Facebook is performance art. It's a phonebook of people I lost contact with many years ago. It's also a quasi-broken emailing list program. It might be a decent advertising platform for small businesses. Don't know. It's not a news feed. It's not stories relevant to me. It's not a way to actually have friends. It's not a place where people create things and share (mostly). People might think it's those things. Hell,…

Facebook works very well for me:

During my lifetime I've lived on 6 cities in 3 different countries. I've got friends (some of them, became very good friends) and people I know from all these places.

Facebook allows me to stay in contact with them, and if I want, to peek at where are they know (and what are they doing). For me, it works as an "information push" platform, where sometimes I'll see an update from an old time friend who I forgot about, and I would use that moment to say hello and congratulate him or give kudos for whatever he is doing (or just say 'haha' at whatever funny picture he shared).

Before that, I had to remember to send an email to every person I knew... and ask them specifically what where they doing.

Sure, some people might find no sense in maintaining those kind of relations (staying in touch with people who you do not actively talk to). But I think we never know when we might be able to get together again, and having this point of contact is good.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#188

Post by xtracto »

antoko wrote: post #150
alphang wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you should mention 'forcing them to': "I'll wake up in the morning and go on Facebook just ... because," Casey says. "It's not like I want to or I don't. I just go on it. I'm, like, forced to. I don't know why. I need to. Facebook takes up my whole life." http://kottke.org/13/05/wanting-to-be-liked

replace "facebook" with "HN" in the quote above... How many of us could have said that? Are we forced to be here?

And Reddit, and Slashdot and WoW and usenet...

Aren't there studies that find there is an element of addiction to browsing the internet?

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#189

Post by bedhead »

I think FB's usefulness breaks down as you get older. It's helpful to understand the average FB user. They're young. They're in high school and college. They probably dont have work friends, random old acquaintances, etc...no uniquely distinct groups of friends. They're less mature. It's typically only later in your twenties that your life starts fragmenting and these issues of "Do I really want to share this with everyone??" arise. That's when FB becomes dominated by generic crap and baby pictures and it goes from being a great tool to being nothing more than a time-waster.

I bet for the younger crowd, FB works just fine for the most part.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#190

Post by [deleted] »

alphang wrote: post #142
calinet6 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brilliant. This is a perfect analysis of this article. People are using Facebook because they want to, not because some weird social power is forcing them to. My friends love it, my parents love it, heck my grandma thinks it's absolutely magical. We get to share things and communicate with family in a way we've never been able to ever. It's not replacing the deep connections and interpersonal relationships—you need t…

Funny you should mention 'forcing them to': "I'll wake up in the morning and go on Facebook just ... because," Casey says. "It's not like I want to or I don't. I just go on it. I'm, like, forced to. I don't know why. I need to. Facebook takes up my whole life." http://kottke.org/13/05/wanting-to-be-liked

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