A Teenager’s View on Social Media • Hacker News Board

Re: A Teenager’s View on Social Media

#261

Post by jpatokal » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 4:00 AM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #3

This is filled with gems that old farts like me (I'm 30) don't have any idea about. If I don’t get any likes on my Instagram photo or Facebook post within 15 minutes you can sure bet I'll delete it. Super interesting take - it's as though they are posting not to show people stuff but to get people's approval for what they are posting. Simple but critically different in my opinion. Facebook is often used by us mainly…

Have you seen Google Plus lately? They just can't call it Google Groups because, well, Google Groups.

https://plus.google.com/communities

Re: A Teenager’s View on Social Media

#262

Post by AndrewKemendo » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 4:18 AM UTC

bcRIPster wrote: post #242

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree in principle, disagree in execution. Pretty much any app maker (whatsapp aside) starts with a skewed market: people with smartphones. iOS makers even moreso. These people trend toward being white and middle/upper class. Now you need to narrow to who buys shit on their phones. Again that demographic skews younger. [1] [2] So right away, if you want a successful smartphone app in the U.S. then you need to target,…

What you say makes sense when you're selling a product. With most of these applications, their potential money making product though is the back-office data they collect on the users themselves which they then sell to brokers or data warehousing services, or provide to targeting advertisement firms. From that stand point you simply want the largest installed user base you can get. A successful smart phone app based o…

You get that user base by providing a simple to use product that quickly addresses a need for the largest number of people, rich, poor, white, black, etc...

Totally agree here.

A successful smart phone app based on these metrics is the one with the largest user base.

This is where we diverge. An app is only as successful as what it can make money from. Having a billion people use something and they don't generate revenue from it is worthless in the long run - bloated investments not withstanding.

A reliable proven to be profitable user base is what consistently makes money - the facebooks etc... are extreme outliers that got lucky with monetization after growing the userbase are not really cases to be emulated.

Re: A Teenager’s View on Social Media

#263

Post by AndrewKemendo » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 4:19 AM UTC

_almosnow wrote: post #229

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a white, suburban, middle-class, male attending a conservative university in a culturally regressive state. Which is the demographic that all of the services in question care about (except whatsapp) - which kind of proves the point.

>Which is the demographic that all of the services in question care about (except whatsapp) - which kind of proves the point. Hahaha, no way that is true man. Also, bcRIPster, I believe your comments provide a valuable POV, that thing about the demographics, it hadn't ocurred to me. Thanks for posting and don't take the witch-hunt personal, remember that karma is given for people that spend all their time here, they…

See my post below this one. The numbers don't lie my friend.

Re: A Teenager’s View on Social Media

#264

Post by AndrewKemendo » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 4:20 AM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #18

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #3

This is filled with gems that old farts like me (I'm 30) don't have any idea about. If I don’t get any likes on my Instagram photo or Facebook post within 15 minutes you can sure bet I'll delete it. Super interesting take - it's as though they are posting not to show people stuff but to get people's approval for what they are posting. Simple but critically different in my opinion. Facebook is often used by us mainly…

I'm older than you and I definitely don't want a one stop shop. Currently I use Facebook to see photos of my extended family, LinkedIn for work & sales, Instagram to keep up with my cooler friends, Twitter to see trending news, StockTwits to see investing ideas... To me this is the future of social networking: many networks, each with a specialized purpose.

I'm older than you and I definitely don't want a one stop shop.

You might not want one but "our generation" has been building them for some time. It's even Peter Thiel's mantra.

Re: A Teenager’s View on Social Media

#265

Post by rspeer » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 4:28 AM UTC

this_user wrote: post #239

hugs wrote: post #55

Also noteworthy that Google+ didn't even get a mention, even if to mock it.

Are there people who actively use G+? To me it seems to have turned into this weird thing that tries to offer a lot of functionality but doesn't really make it clear what it actually is. It was supposed to be a social network and now it's Google's "social layer" - whatever that may mean. I personally don't even know anyone who would describe G+ as relevant.

G+ is where you go to talk with people who work at Google, and people who know a lot of people who work at Google.

This actually makes it relevant for me, but sure, it's not relevant for most people.

Re: A Teenager’s View on Social Media

#266

Post by kmicklas » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 4:29 AM UTC

20 year old college student in the US here. He got a lot of things very right, but also from my experience some things very wrong:

Instagram: No one uses it. Maybe 10% of students have one and those that do spend little time on it.

Facebook: It's not as uncool as it sounds. If anything it's had a resurgence lately. Maybe people post less content to their profile these days, but post on each other's timelines and use the messaging system more than ever. As smartphones and connectivity continue to improve, there's less and less incentive to use texting over Facebook. Also, I don't know what he's talking about with groups. No one uses those.

Snapchat: I would say it is currently the biggest one. (People spend more time on Facebook but care more about Snapchat.) However it seems to be losing momentum at this point. Since introducing the story feature, there has been a constant and continuous shift away from the original, more personal uses and towards a more Twitter like document of daily occurrences through stories. Less back and forth dialogue, less creative art, etc. People are also fed up with ads and gimmicks like messaging and sending money (???).

GroupMe: Never heard of anyone using anything but Facebook for this purpose.

Venmo: Not sure if it really qualifies as a social network but it's trying to and it deserves mention. Everyone loves documenting their restaurant expenditures and there seems to be a strong culture of wittiness in generating the captions.

Re: A Teenager’s View on Social Media

#267

Post by bcRIPster » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 4:52 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #244

bcRIPster wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And seriously? WTF!

Please re-read the HN guidelines. They ask you not to post comments complaining about being downvoted. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Thanks and no worries. It's just been one of those days. :)

Re: A Teenager’s View on Social Media

#268

Post by bcRIPster » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 5:15 AM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #262

bcRIPster wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you say makes sense when you're selling a product. With most of these applications, their potential money making product though is the back-office data they collect on the users themselves which they then sell to brokers or data warehousing services, or provide to targeting advertisement firms. From that stand point you simply want the largest installed user base you can get. A successful smart phone app based o…

You get that user base by providing a simple to use product that quickly addresses a need for the largest number of people, rich, poor, white, black, etc... Totally agree here. A successful smart phone app based on these metrics is the one with the largest user base. This is where we diverge. An app is only as successful as what it can make money from. Having a billion people use something and they don't generate rev…

I'm not sure of what the divergence you're indicating is. I agree that an app with no monitization is worthless for sure. A bloated app user base where you aren't monetizing your users is a money sink.

Granted there are other cases of revenue models that we may not even be aware of that are in play. For instance Twitter initially was making money off SMS bulk transactions. They would buy SMS network blocks in volume and sale broadcasting blocks to marketers at a markup which was lower than outbound texting rates. There was good money in the margins here for a time. They don't like to talk about it publicly but they still admit that the service was built around a focus on SMS... https://blog.twitter.com/2010/introducing-fast-follow-and-ot...

This is why for a while they also tried like hell to push people to take Tweets over SMS instead of having pulling them from the web via a web browser or other web based client. Smartphones unexpectedly gimped this business model for them.

There are boutique companies today that still are trying to eep out business around this model such as this one... http://www.fabit.com/products/mobile/sms/websms/overview.asp...

...now I'm just rambling...

Re: A Teenager’s View on Social Media

#269

Post by hyperbovine » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 5:17 AM UTC

shampine wrote: post #209

dntrkv wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And just because it's happened in the past does not guarantee that it will happen again. People have been predicting the downfall of Facebook for years, but it keeps growing.

It will, I can think of a ton of services I've used in the past that one day you just stop logging on. You don't even remember the last day of using them, just one day you stop. Then slowly everyone stops. (E.g., AOL, AIM, Geocities, IRC^, MySpace, and most recently Path & Instagram). I assume the same will happen in my life for Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc. One day I will just stop. ^I use IRC for dev stuff now, b…

Reddit? Perish the thought :-)

Re: A Teenager’s View on Social Media

#270

Post by bcRIPster » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 5:18 AM UTC

EricBart wrote: post #46

bcRIPster wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And just how did you come to that conclusion when he specifically said he doesn't care if someone like Snapchat keeps his photos forever?!? Will he care when his photos start showing up in advertisements? Will he care when a prospective employer with a data sharing agreement with Snapchat's future owner accesses his document/activity history and he can't get a job? Sigh.

I'll hazard a guess that the prospective employer (if looking at other potentials in the same demographic) will need to turn a blind eye if they want to hire anyone at all. They'll all have something stupid on there. I'm curious to see what happens when my generation starts running for office.

Given that we've seemed to reach a stage where most US politicians seem to match the profile of what one would clinically call a sociopath, I'm going to hazard a guess that they will not really care.