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Survey says Facebook still in use by young, but Snapchat/Instagram are real

blog.garrytan.com

11–20 of 56 posts

Re: Survey says Facebook still in use by young, but Snapchat/Instagram are real

#11
post #7
post #6

I am so happy to see someone make an effort to do more than tell a story of how their girlfriends cousins dog said something and so obviously facebook/college/everything is totally over. Anecdotes are for color, data is for predictions and analysis.

People are beginning to preface anecdotal evidence with "this just anecdotal, but ...", as if there is some loophole to the fallacy. It's really annoying when people confuse humility and an acknowledgement of a scarcity of evidence with jumping head-first into making a useless, fallacious argument. Personal stories are fine[1], but it's worth keeping in mind that one of the pre-eminent unironic peddlers of anecdotal…

In discussion forums I'm okay with the preface, because I read it as something like an implicit request for more information, "I think I've noticed [x] but don't have any real data, anyone know something further?" But I wouldn't write an article (not even an essay-length blog post) based on that premise.

Re: Survey says Facebook still in use by young, but Snapchat/Instagram are real

#12
post #2

Anecdotal evidence: I had never messed with Instragram until I got a girlfriend whose peer group used that exclusively over Facebook. These are all in the 28-32 age range. It seems they were all eager to use a system that just focused on sharing photos and didn't want all the 'bloat' associated with Facebook. In addition to preferring the focus on photosharing, there was a sense of just wanting to be back on a networ…

At some point, there will be a paid social network with significant membership.

This is likely to occur after some particularly egregious and underhanded sale/use of user data by Facebook.

It's likely to be more popular among older professionals, who care more about their reputation because of their career, and don't care about paying a minimal fee.

Re: Survey says Facebook still in use by young, but Snapchat/Instagram are real

#13
post #7
post #6

I am so happy to see someone make an effort to do more than tell a story of how their girlfriends cousins dog said something and so obviously facebook/college/everything is totally over. Anecdotes are for color, data is for predictions and analysis.

People are beginning to preface anecdotal evidence with "this just anecdotal, but ...", as if there is some loophole to the fallacy. It's really annoying when people confuse humility and an acknowledgement of a scarcity of evidence with jumping head-first into making a useless, fallacious argument. Personal stories are fine[1], but it's worth keeping in mind that one of the pre-eminent unironic peddlers of anecdotal…

>> People are beginning to preface anecdotal evidence with "this just anecdotal, but ...", as if there is some loophole to the fallacy.

maybe we just subconsciously hope that maybe, someday, someone/thing/program will just come along and compile all our "just anecdotes" into real, hard, data? So we just have to write it down, just in-case maybe that person is reading our story right now!

Re: Survey says Facebook still in use by young, but Snapchat/Instagram are real

#15
On a related note, this article is interesting: "What The Tech World Looks Like To A Teen"

http://www.buzzfeed.com/joshmiller/what-the-tech-world-looks...

It got marked dead on submission. I'm not sure if the domain is marked spam, or I'm banned from submission, or what.

Re: Survey says Facebook still in use by young, but Snapchat/Instagram are real

#16
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting concept I hadn't thought of: how desirable is it from an aging Facebook user to start off with a clean slate? Given the amount of people I now know in my age group complaining that no one on their Facebook feeds is relevant to their lives post-university, I'd imagine it's quite high. I know my Facebook feed has acquired quite a bit of cruft over the years.

Another problem, post-university, is keeping a clean Facebook profile when all your new connections are professionals. G+ solve this with circles, but I don't know anyone on G+, and it's too easy to make privacy mistakes on Facebook. My Facebook profile is turning into my new Linkedin as I'm getting older.

You can still create friend lists in Facebook, but it's not nearly as easy as G+'s drag-and-drop circles UI.

Re: Survey says Facebook still in use by young, but Snapchat/Instagram are real

#17

On a related note, this article is interesting: "What The Tech World Looks Like To A Teen" http://www.buzzfeed.com/joshmiller/what-the-tech-world-looks... It got marked dead on submission. I'm not sure if the domain is marked spam, or I'm banned from submission, or what.

It's usually best to submit the original article instead of a syndicated (AKA "blog spam") post: https://medium.com/product-design/d8d4f2300cf3 (previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4982850).

Re: Survey says Facebook still in use by young, but Snapchat/Instagram are real

#18
post #2

Anecdotal evidence: I had never messed with Instragram until I got a girlfriend whose peer group used that exclusively over Facebook. These are all in the 28-32 age range. It seems they were all eager to use a system that just focused on sharing photos and didn't want all the 'bloat' associated with Facebook. In addition to preferring the focus on photosharing, there was a sense of just wanting to be back on a networ…

At some point, there will be a paid social network with significant membership. This is likely to occur after some particularly egregious and underhanded sale/use of user data by Facebook. It's likely to be more popular among older professionals, who care more about their reputation because of their career, and don't care about paying a minimal fee.

That would be kind of cool, actually. A $5 one-time fee for every user. It would keep out the riff-raff and spammers, and there would be no need to sell user content or even have ads at all.

Re: Survey says Facebook still in use by young, but Snapchat/Instagram are real

#19
I would be hesitant to wonder about the data on Snapchat and what it provides. Think of how the app works: You take a picture, add a caption, and draw on the picture if you please. Then you select friends to send it to and you're done. That can be accomplished in < 30 seconds. Viewing snaps sent from friends is at MAX 10 seconds per snap. Unless a user is sending and receiving a lot of snaps, I would doubt they reach ' used regularly (defined by several hours per week or more, multiple answers OK)' threshold.

Re: Survey says Facebook still in use by young, but Snapchat/Instagram are real

#20
post #2

Anecdotal evidence: I had never messed with Instragram until I got a girlfriend whose peer group used that exclusively over Facebook. These are all in the 28-32 age range. It seems they were all eager to use a system that just focused on sharing photos and didn't want all the 'bloat' associated with Facebook. In addition to preferring the focus on photosharing, there was a sense of just wanting to be back on a networ…

It is amusing that there's less friction to move to a new network than to clean up the old one. Unfriending (or hiding/muting/whatever while still actively using Facebook) is much more likely to be taken as an affront by your long-time Facebook friends than simply stopping using FB much.

But eventually it seems like the same people will move to the new network of choice, and try to contact you there, and you've got the same problem all over again? Or you drift out of touch with that new network...

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