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Facebook bends the rules of audience engagement to its advantage

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook bends the rules of audience engagement to its advantage

#101

Post by raddad »

cryptoz wrote: post #49
Aelinsaar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that's a little ominous, but yeah absolutely. It also fits with the "consumer as product" viewpoint.

Isn't the only logical endpoint for Facebook to become a VR world where we all spend 100% of our time? That's what a forever-continuing revenue increase would create, right? And that's exactly how the incentive structures exist right now. I don't really like that society places such high emphasis on structures that create dystopias.

>VR world where we all spend 100% of our time

Farmville !! I can't wait !!

Re: Facebook bends the rules of audience engagement to its advantage

#102

Post by tallanvor »

notliketherest wrote: post #38

Kill your Facebook. Seriously. You'll feel so liberated. And showing people pictures of your recent life when you meet them or email them is so fun and you get so much more attention and conversation out of it. Best decision of my life!

Not reading Facebook posts with any regularity can be a good way to improve your mood and not have to worry about what your life looks like compared to anyone else. But it's unfortunately now the biggest messaging app out there.

I switched to only having Messenger installed on my phone. If I really want to visit the site, I do so through the browser, and I post once or twice a year. I also have an extremely small list of friends on their compared to most people I know. This has let me strike the balance between being able to contact people easily and not feel like Facebook is a daily part of my life.

Re: Facebook bends the rules of audience engagement to its advantage

#103

Post by lmm »

darkclarity wrote: post #69
elliotec wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it sounds okay to be liberated, but what if you just don't spend 50 minutes on it per day? Also, what about the argument of keeping in touch with all your high school friends and distant relatives? What about all the things I would've found out on facebook that I'm now missing out on?

Facebook doesn't just keep you in contact with old friends, it encourages you to stalk their public facing persona. There's none of the mystery and personal discovery that creates the bonds of friendship. It's not real friendship. It's like being a super fan to an amateur musician - a one way street with occasional responses. The fear of missing out? That's just one of the many addictive strings that Facebook tugs to…

> There's none of the mystery and personal discovery that creates the bonds of friendship. It's not real friendship.

It's up to us to define what friendship we consider real or not. Personally I find mystery an unpleasant waste of time.

> It's like being a super fan to an amateur musician - a one way street with occasional responses.

Huh? There's no asymmetry if you're both using Facebook.

> If you don't maintain some link then they should be resigned to the past - until some event occurs to trigger a re-established connection.

Screw your "should". Plenty of times I've found out via Facebook that someone was going to an event near me, or just had a common interest, and met up with them as a result. And that's been fun.

Re: Facebook bends the rules of audience engagement to its advantage

#104

Post by coupdetaco »

cwilkes wrote: post #96
Aelinsaar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Usage patterns and "deriving value" seem like very different beasts.

At a "big data" talk Yahoo gave one of the keynotes where they asked which one of the two email samples had the "most engagement" Surprise surprise it was the one with the confusing text on it -- people were clicking on it to see what the heck it meant. But to the Yahoo guys that meant that email was better as it got more clicks. And I suppose it is better if that's how your bonus is constructed.

No really. Send slightly jacked-up canned emails. Gravitas!

Re: Facebook bends the rules of audience engagement to its advantage

#105

Post by RottenHuman »

optforfon wrote: post #64
notliketherest wrote: post #38

Kill your Facebook. Seriously. You'll feel so liberated. And showing people pictures of your recent life when you meet them or email them is so fun and you get so much more attention and conversation out of it. Best decision of my life!

I didn't have facebook all through college. A few years after I decided to get one and my social life blossomed. Now it's by far the most important piece of technology I use. I keep in touch with people all over the world - some who I met once in some distant country. So easy to hit up someone you haven't talked to in months. It's amazing

Maybe it's because I'm old, but I do all this with email phone calls and text messages and it seems to me to do the job just fine.

What is the advantage of using Facebook to keep in touch with people that I'm missing?

Re: Facebook bends the rules of audience engagement to its advantage

#106

Post by chimprich »

RottenHuman wrote: post #105
optforfon wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't have facebook all through college. A few years after I decided to get one and my social life blossomed. Now it's by far the most important piece of technology I use. I keep in touch with people all over the world - some who I met once in some distant country. So easy to hit up someone you haven't talked to in months. It's amazing

Maybe it's because I'm old, but I do all this with email phone calls and text messages and it seems to me to do the job just fine. What is the advantage of using Facebook to keep in touch with people that I'm missing?

Maybe you can handle your social life fine but some of us who are more incompetent at it like the assistance of some automation. I'm only partly joking.

Re: Facebook bends the rules of audience engagement to its advantage

#107

Post by Kiro »

notliketherest wrote: post #38

Kill your Facebook. Seriously. You'll feel so liberated. And showing people pictures of your recent life when you meet them or email them is so fun and you get so much more attention and conversation out of it. Best decision of my life!

I spend many hours a day on Facebook and couldn't be happier.

Re: Facebook bends the rules of audience engagement to its advantage

#108

Post by RottenHuman »

chimprich wrote: post #106
RottenHuman wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's because I'm old, but I do all this with email phone calls and text messages and it seems to me to do the job just fine. What is the advantage of using Facebook to keep in touch with people that I'm missing?

Maybe you can handle your social life fine but some of us who are more incompetent at it like the assistance of some automation. I'm only partly joking.

I don't know about that. I'm just honestly confused what Facebook offers for those purposes that "traditional" tools don't.

Re: Facebook bends the rules of audience engagement to its advantage

#109

Post by aembleton »

RottenHuman wrote: post #105
optforfon wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't have facebook all through college. A few years after I decided to get one and my social life blossomed. Now it's by far the most important piece of technology I use. I keep in touch with people all over the world - some who I met once in some distant country. So easy to hit up someone you haven't talked to in months. It's amazing

Maybe it's because I'm old, but I do all this with email phone calls and text messages and it seems to me to do the job just fine. What is the advantage of using Facebook to keep in touch with people that I'm missing?

The ability to get a single feed of what they are doing that they can easily send out to everyone without having to create a mailing list.

Being able to easily react to any status that your friends post, and being able to comment on that. The email equivalent would be a separate email thread for each status update from each friend. That would quickly get messy.

And a big one for me is being able to create an event, and invite friends to it. Any updates to said event can then be communicated to all those interested without you having to make updates to a list of email addresses.

Re: Facebook bends the rules of audience engagement to its advantage

#110

Post by goldenkey »

PunchTornado wrote: post #100
twelvechairs wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a hospital.

or a cemetery

Way to get morbid HN... but yeah. Anything that distracts from original purpose is a tar pit for time. I certainly hope I don't go into a cemetery willing and end up staying...
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