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Facebook Is Losing Teens

forbes.com

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Re: Facebook Is Losing Teens

#41

Post by InclinedPlane »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #26
InclinedPlane wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way that valuation made sense is if facebook managed to capture an enormous fraction of all worldwide ad revenue. That always seemed extremely unlikely to me.

OP is only giving half the story. FB earnings are, in a sense, artificially low. They are dumping money into expanding and growing. FB wants good earnings but, right now, that's not as important as growing users and use. Of course there will always be money spent on growth but to what extent. When they go from dumping money into growth, P/E will be more meaningful in the typical sense.

I was talking about revenue.

Yes, they are growing. They are expanding their revenue. They have to in order to justify their valuation. But they need to grow at unsustainable rates for a fairly long time for that valuation to make sense. Unless they completely pivot the company they would, as I mentioned, need to grab significant fraction of all of Earth's advertising revenue, in all media. It's unreasonable to assume that current share holders are investing in facebook out of some belief in an unannounced, unplanned, speculative pivot into a different industry, that's either clairvoyance or rank stupidity.

Re: Facebook Is Losing Teens

#42

Post by jamesaguilar »

tantalor wrote: post #22
wavesounds wrote: post #11

Facebooks is priced at 240X Price to Earnings. If they start losing users or even stop growing its hard to imagine how that PE ratio continues to makes any sense. Even with an increase in mobile revenue its still less then desktop revenue and users are certainly flocking to mobile too which is a double wammy. So facebook has to transition to making more money per user if its user base stops growing. Otherwise you're…

[citation needed]

Normally you use this when there is a fact in dispute (on Reddit, not here). There are no facts in question in the comment you're responding to. There are arguments you may disagree with, but you don't need a citation to make an argument.

Re: Facebook Is Losing Teens

#43

Post by libovness »

There are really two hypotheses:

1) _Teenagers in general_ do not use Facebook (which does _not_ rule out that they will become avid Facebook users once they grow out of their teenage years)

2) _Today's teenagers_ disinterest in Facebook is fundamentally different than it was for teenagers' of several years ago (which would suggest they'll never get attached to Facebook the way previous teenagers once did, and therefore never become avid Facebook users).

The 10-K report suggests #2 ("younger users were less engaged with the social network than previously") but my hunch is that it's more like #1 (I argued this here: http://whoo.ps/2013/03/04/teens-go-where-identity-isnt).

Teenagers now have more social networking options (Instagram, Snapchat, etc.) to choose from than previous generations of teenagers - which explains why today's teenagers are less engaged with Facebook than previously - but that doesn't mean they won't want/need the kind of canonical identity that Facebook provides (once that awkward, impressionable teenager actually grows into an adult with a firmer identify).

Re: Facebook Is Losing Teens

#44

Post by rustynails77 »

argonaut wrote: post #38
chetanahuja wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a social utility, the lack of which meant losing touch with friends, not being invited to events, and generally missing out on a large amount of social interaction" And according to the article (and my own, admittedly limited, survey of teens and "tweens" I know), that utility value doesn't exist anymore. Now, you could argue that the thing they are moving to is also facebook under a different name (instagram)... bu…

I actually think the value increases as you get older (through college-aged), as your social networks fragment and split off. When I was in high school my FB friends were mostly people I saw day-to-day anyway, so FB merely consisted of keeping in the loop with the social activity of people I would see in person every day anyway. So I can totally understand why once-core FB activities are moving to Instagram/Snapchat/…

I just don't share this vision. You either have -real- friends, or you have acquaintances. Facebook is not for real friends. If people are your friends and want to stay in contact with you, they will - like they did before Facebook existed.

Re: Facebook Is Losing Teens

#45

Post by Myrmornis »

CoryG89 wrote: post #35
Myrmornis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err, what? If I closed my facebook account I would lose virtually all contact I have with every friend I have made other than the person I live with and a few people who live near me and my family. How the hell is that not utility?

It's not really Facebook offering utility though. They offer the same features every other site trying to be the "fabric of the internet" offers and some would say not as much. It just so happens that everyone you know has a Facebook at the moment.

If I like watching birds and someone in my village puts up a bird feeder and all the birds go there and he offers to let me come and watch in return for a small payment then I would say that, while the birds are at his feeder, he is offering utility. This remains true even if all the other villagers also put up identical feeders which remain sadly birdless.

Whereas If I'm understanding you correctly, you would say that he is offering utility only if the birds are at his feeder because of some unique bird-attracting design features of his feeder which the other feeders lack.

That seems to me to be confusing an implementation detail with what actually matters to the user: he just wants access to birds (his friends). He doesn't care why they are where they are.

Re: Facebook Is Losing Teens

#46

Post by zitko »

rustynails77 wrote: post #44
argonaut wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think the value increases as you get older (through college-aged), as your social networks fragment and split off. When I was in high school my FB friends were mostly people I saw day-to-day anyway, so FB merely consisted of keeping in the loop with the social activity of people I would see in person every day anyway. So I can totally understand why once-core FB activities are moving to Instagram/Snapchat/…

I just don't share this vision. You either have -real- friends, or you have acquaintances. Facebook is not for real friends. If people are your friends and want to stay in contact with you, they will - like they did before Facebook existed.

Agreed. Sadly most of my "friends" are replacing real person-to-person dates, coffees etc. with Facebook chatting.

Re: Facebook Is Losing Teens

#47

Post by ea777 »

argonaut wrote: post #12
cookiecaper wrote: post #2

As the article stated, it's difficult to overcome the "grandma factor" -- once something becomes so pervasive as to be near-universal, even among persons unlikely to be clued in, its cool factor is diminished if not completely obliterated. Some groups actively crave differentiation, and teenagers seeking to assert their independence are prominent among them. It can be difficult to express and explore in the way teena…

As a 19 year old, I will say that from my perspective, this "coolness" factor is seriously overblown and misunderstood. Facebook was never "cool," even when I first got Facebook back in 9th grade, when I was around 14 years old. Facebook was always a highly addictive and vital necessity - a social utility, the lack of which meant losing touch with friends, not being invited to events, and generally missing out on a l…

The thing I find interesting about referring to Facebook as a social utility is how different that angle is than just being "social" and that's it.

Instagram (and others) may be more "cool" at this point than Facebook, but they absolutely do not provide the same level of usefulness. Private messages, events with invitations, groups, the level of organization for photos, etc all together in one place connected to everyone you care about is indeed "useful." It's just straight up inefficient to organize events and share specific information on Instagram, Twitter or like services. It's because of this I feel they will continue to thrive, as teens will still use them for the "utility" and other services for the new, trendy social interactions.

Re: Facebook Is Losing Teens

#48

Post by 6d0debc071 »

> However, teenagers have made it clear with their quick adoption of social networks such as Instagram and Snapchat they want to share everything and with as many people as possible.

Alternative explanation - teens want to share ephemerally and with a certain degree of anonymity. They don't want their parents looking over their shoulder at their friends or conversations, and seek to avoid entanglement with sections of their social network that are going to bully them or have a significantly lasting effect tied to a persistent searchable identity.

Re: Facebook Is Losing Teens

#49

Post by dwaltrip »

vdaniuk wrote: post #39
hawkharris wrote: post #27

As more teenagers gravitate toward online social networks (if not Facebook, then Instagram, etc.), I'm concerned that not enough of them will feel lonely. I recently watched a Louis C.K. interview about young people and technology, which struck a chord with me. I agree that adolescents benefit from a sense of boredom and isolation because it encourages them to cultivate stronger in-person social networks: http://team…

I am flabbergasted. Adolescents benefit from isolation? And you're citing a comedian? Care to cite some serious sources?

What the parent comment is trying to get at is that many people today do not know how to sit quietly alone with their thoughts. If they have a single spare moment, in less than half a second they whip out their phones and mindlessly check fb, etc. Due to this, they are less pensive and self reflective. While hard to test, it seems like a reasonable theory.

Re: Facebook Is Losing Teens

#50

Post by vdaniuk »

dwaltrip wrote: post #49
vdaniuk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am flabbergasted. Adolescents benefit from isolation? And you're citing a comedian? Care to cite some serious sources?

What the parent comment is trying to get at is that many people today do not know how to sit quietly alone with their thoughts. If they have a single spare moment, in less than half a second they whip out their phones and mindlessly check fb, etc. Due to this, they are less pensive and self reflective. While hard to test, it seems like a reasonable theory.

Really? I am not sure. We've got a lot of quirks in our cognition and intuition is not really a good heuristic for studying human mind.
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