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The Facebook experiment has failed

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Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#281

Post by bittercynic »

It is not an experiment, it is a mechanism to make gobs of money, and it worked.

Facebook is now being destroyed by its overwhelming success. Since people feel locked in (because, hey, that's where all my friends are...) facebook can keep cranking up the heat, making the experience more and more unpleasant for users, and they will still stick around and give their eyeballs to it.

From talking to many people on and offline, it seems that facebook is almost universally hated now, but we have no choice, since everyone else is on facebook.

This will probably keep working for some time, but eventually, and very suddenly, there will be a tipping point where many people suddenly can't stand it any more. Once facebook loses that first big chunk, then not everyone will be on facebook anymore, and all the others who despised it for years but hung on because everyone else did will not have to put up with it anymore.

Facebook will suddenly go from universal necessity to irrelevant, and it will happen overnight.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#282

Post by dirkgently »

smspence wrote: post #213
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,…

That doesn't sound accurate to me... You're not always talking to everybody . On Facebook you can create friend lists, and then post things that are only visible to the people in the chosen list, in the same way that you can share things with only certain "Circles" on Google+. For example, I have different lists for "Close Friends", "Family", "Work Friends", "Random Acquaintances", etc. If I choose, I can share a pos…

Can you limit your feed to default to only certain lists?

Can you remove all the promoted content (aka crap)?

Is it easy to see who you are really sharing with even after creating list?

Can you prevent one list from knowing what you liked or commented on other lists?

You most likely haven't used G+ to really know the difference. FB lists are anything but G+ Circles.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#283

Post by jarek »

pyoung wrote: post #255
pseut wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind adding a few details on how you set this up (I'm assuming that you're using 'listserv' as a generic term)? Is it on your own machine, through a web host, etc? I've thought about doing something just like that, but haven't spent the time to figure out a "good" way to set it up.

You could use google groups (it's basically a mailing list). Pretty straight forward. We had one for our 'post-college' social circle. It was a good way to spread the word about happy hours and parties, without spamming everyone on facebook.

I would caution against using a service like Google Groups for this, actually. There's been too many changes to corporate-backed services like this (Yahoo! Groups' 2010 mess, remember Google Groups was originally a usenet reader to begin with) and moving a community is a pain. Host it somewhere that won't pivot.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#284

Post by cargo8 »

scholia wrote: post #199
abrahamsen wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The keywords are "can be". Or as the author put it "unless you jump through hoops". The Google+ interface makes a difference. The majority of stuff on Google+ is shared privately, because the interface invites doing it that way. (The interface also invites having a "loudmouth" circle with zero notification level, so you can follow people without having their posts in your default stream).

It's really easy to hide people on Facebook, if you even see their stuff in the first place. Mainly, you'll see stuff from the people you interact with. Otherwise, G+ Circles are ridiculously clunky and slow, due to Google choosing superficial eye-candy over functionality.

The problem with Facebook's mechanism for "hiding people" is that until you go through immense effort, your experience sucks. The "Acquaintances" list (which I might add was a knee-jerk reaction to the launch of Google+) only serves to take certain people out of your stream, while plugging in other friends that you don't care about. Until you go through this cycle (which is actually phenomenal social engineering as it is self-reinforcing - once you start you have to continue otherwise it's worse) repeatedly to prune out ALL your non-close contacts, your experience sucks.

The fact that Google+ prioritizes and emphasizes splitting friends into these circles as a PRIMARY means of organizing your friends is a huge difference. Although it is cumbersome, it is a much more realistic representation of human interaction, making friends and having different groups of friends.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#285

Post by qu4z-2 »

brianpan wrote: post #225
austenallred wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google+ really was on to something with its circles: My friends are easily divisible into groups, and, apart from life events like getting engaged, what I want to share is only really relevant to a specific subset. I know Facebook has groups you can share specific things with, but it's not a feature Facebook has focused on, so even I don't really use it. I could use google +, but no one else does, and there's not muc…

I thought so as well, but I'm not really that interested in "organizing" my friend list. Ideally, yes, I would. But there's too many corner cases and overlapping circles that it's never exactly what I want and it quickly gets out of date. For me, Facebook did work the way I wanted long ago- people tagged you in photos and it was fun to look at photos of you and your friends. The problem is that in order for Facebook…

Well, I just set up a few circles when I joined (maybe 7ish), and now whenever I add someone, I quickly tick one or two of the boxes. It's not really high-maintenance.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#286

Post by qu4z-2 »

bittercynic wrote: post #280
robomartin wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, sure. You go and try to run a real web-based business with employees, offices and the required infrastructure without "money money". The point stands: If you as a user don't explicitly pay for it with cash, using an ad blocker means you have chosen to deny the service some revenue. OK, don't call it theft. That's fine. Here's a simple mental exercise: Assume that 100% of the entire world-wide Internet audience us…

That might not be so good for Silicon Valley, but I believe mankind would be richer overall if a huge chunk of the internet ceased to exist.

I agree. That does actually sound like quite an appealing internet, to be honest.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#287

Post by qu4z-2 »

CyberDroiD wrote: post #251
jamesjguthrie wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Withdrawal symptoms: If the person stops using the Internet, they experience unpleasant feelings or physical effects." It's a bit like having a drug addiction really. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_addiction_disorder

Wanting to stay connected and communicate with other humans is not a disorder, it's actually quite healthy! I think it is fascinating that people feel compelled to visit Facebook or any website, and don't know why. It's like calling someone every morning: you want to communicate. If you stop doing that suddenly, you'll miss it. Calling it an 'addiction' or 'some strange social force' or other conspiracy ideas are int…

I somewhat question the effectiveness of ... let's say Reddit as actual communication, though. Maybe I'm projecting, but I find my online social interactions are nice, but don't really compare to actually hanging out with friends, or even taking time to do something I enjoy, like cooking a nice meal or whatever.

At the end of a couple of hours of commenting on people I know's pictures of cats or whatever I look back and think "Wow, where'd that time go?" whereas if I've done something "productive" I feel much better. It's possible that's just because I've filed time-on-the-internet under "wasting time" and so I'm judging myself, but I think the feeling bad was the reason I decided I shouldn't do it, not the other way 'round.

Sorry, that turned into a ramble.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#288

Post by puredemo »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #224

Am I the only one who has no issue with Facebook whatsoever? I love it. It's free. I find incredible value in it. People need to get a grip.

You find incredible value in it because you're so old. Of course someone in their fifties wants to feel like they're "more a part of something."

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#289

Post by einhverfr »

stephengillie wrote: post #276
einhverfr wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But again, that's what's wrong with facebook. The Zucherberg has basically said he things we need less privacy, but humans need that safe place, and a society without privacy doesn't offer that. The thing is many facebook users understand that.

The problem isnt Facebook , the problem is People who have built their lives on the skeletons in their closet, and technology allowing people to know more about each other . Your neighbors know tons about you, but you're only worried about people working in datacenters.

It isn't just that though. It's that you have a lot of information now that can be ripped out of context and used to create a very different narrative.

I have said before and I will say again, Facebook is primarily useful as a tool for self-marketing, not for socializing. If you aren't marketing yourself and trying carefully to create a specific image, you are better off elsewhere.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#290

Post by sergiosgc »

moheeb wrote: post #229
sergiosgc wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pinterest and Instagram grew out from the base of early smartphone adopters. These is as techy a group as you can find...

Early smartphones mostly came out in the mid 2000s...way before Instagram or Pinterest.

Dating the smartphone revolution at anytime before the first iPhone is disingenuous and you know it. Even then, the bulk of Internet-using smartphone users were tech heads.
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