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The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

economist.com

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Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#171

Post by [deleted] »

ksec wrote: post #135
wybiral wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The best non-yahoo similarity I can find is what Google is doing with Blogger. That's a good point. But to be fair everything "social" that Google has touched has died with the exception of YouTube. In fact Google really hasn't done a great job holding onto many other arenas than their main ones. Blogger has been blasted by Medium. Knol was outlasted by Quora. Google Code was beat by Github. Their "shopping" attemp…

The problem with Google is exactly the same as Microsoft in the 90s. They just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. What that means is, I don't mean it in a small way but in a big way. - Steve Jobs.

[deleted]

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#172

Post by johnchristopher »

StephenMelon wrote: post #46
ben_w wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t need to be a better graph, it needs to be good enough to grow. Most FB users probably aren’t “power users”.

Facebook jumped the shark when they started trying to encourage private individuals to “create engagement” and pay to boost their posts. If internal marketing jargon is leaking into your UX, you clearly have serious problems with how your staff are being incentivised. Facebook could have become an engine that allowed society to maximise human capital and but they sacrificed all that potential at the altar of growth h…

Facebook users can't boost their own posts, only a Facebook page owner can boost a post made as the page.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#173

Post by chiefalchemist »

dkrich wrote: post #75

This seems implausible precisely because it’s the crowded view. But can anyone recall a time that the crowd correctly predicted the ascent of an unpopular product or the descent of a popular one? I’m old enough to remember Yahoo’s rise and fall. There was a time people thought Zuckerberg was a greedy fool for turning down a $1 billion bid from Yahoo. Oh yeah did we forget about that? Yahoo failed because they were ou…

> "In fact it’s the opposite- people are uneasy with how effectively they’ve acquired users and their data and monetized it."

The people I know who uneasy are not so much concerned with the fact that FB has done this; but how. Phrases that come up are: reckless, unethical, lack of transparency, immaturity, etc.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#174

Post by TheGrumpyBrit »

SCdF wrote: post #20
King-Aaron wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's around 2.23 billion active users you might want to pass that message on to.

Active users as a statistic reminds me of employment rate. It sounds useful, but it's not really that useful, because it's not really measuring the interesting thing, it just sounds like it is. For example, I think the stat you're quoting is monthly active users. If everyone used to engage with FB 20 times a day but now does so once a day (or once a week, or once a month) the active user count will stay the same, but…

I think a better metric would based on actual user behaviour rather than a simple count. For example, the number of posts or comments across the network, or the number of friend requests sent (new connections made). I still use Facebook quite a bit, but I've definitely become more of a consumer than a participant - I don't think my own status has been updated in months. It's basically become YouTube/Reddit, but with content based on people I actually know rather than what's popular.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#175

Post by rayvy »

nolok wrote: post #81
dkrich wrote: post #75

This seems implausible precisely because it’s the crowded view. But can anyone recall a time that the crowd correctly predicted the ascent of an unpopular product or the descent of a popular one? I’m old enough to remember Yahoo’s rise and fall. There was a time people thought Zuckerberg was a greedy fool for turning down a $1 billion bid from Yahoo. Oh yeah did we forget about that? Yahoo failed because they were ou…

> Yahoo failed because they were out-innovated The worst part is that Yahoo innovated a lot ... In incubators, side projects, etc ... But they failed to bring their innovations to their main products, or to turn their side things into full blown products. They had no plan, neither overall or per product. Take emails for exemple, for the longest time (and still now, although not as dominating) THE key to user identity…

> The worst part is that Yahoo innovated a lot

^ This!

Yahoo innovated a ton! Everything from the software infrastructure level (a few submissions to the Apache Big Data suite), to the hardware infrastructure level (data centers) to acquisitions (had they just made a mobile app of Flickr they would've had Instagram years before Instagram).

But yes, their biggest problem to me, seemed to be by far and large lack of leadership (e.g., the CEO turnover)

Disclosure: previously worked at Yahoo

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#176

Post by mmirate »

sytelus wrote: post #40

In all likelyhood this is a “submarine” article crafted by a PR firm like Definers for a hit job on Facebook: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18511963 There are plenty of short sellers who would benefit from FB’s plummeting stock. In reality, FB’s DAU/MAU are largely unchanged. The stories that young people “deleted Facebook” were downright falsehood. There is simply no viable competition for Facebook in market…

Disregarding the fact that this is the Economist who don't usually publish such drivel:

You don't have to be a short-seller to hate Facebook.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#177

Post by agumonkey »

ams6110 wrote: post #163
agumonkey wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just came back from an island, we barely used computers. Never been so happy. People use whatsapp a lot, but it's just a modern reincarnation of phones. Send a little text, a little voice message, a little video. Nothing more. There it seems it's just right fulfilling the need to chat. The rest was a fantasy.

So (never used WhatsApp), how is it better than email or SMS for those things?

Just integrated and smartphone friendly. Think cellphone usage++ without the cruft.

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#178

Post by jillesvangurp »

katzgrau wrote: post #104
jillesvangurp wrote: post #92

It's easy to predict that companies will fail, because most do in the end. It's very rare for companies to survive for long periods of time. Just look at the fortune 500 over time. It changes, massively, from decade to decade. If anything that trend is accelerating: companies grow faster and disappear faster as well. So, predicting that neither e.g. Google nor Facebook will be around a decade or two from now is not t…

Facebook is the most expansive ad platform ever built. There are few fronts where it isn't the clear leader in capability. Advertising is problematic as a revenue model for companies on the other side of that mile-wide moat. And if Zuck ever goes, the entire company goes with it.

Is that because he owns it or because he adds value in day to day management?

Re: The new Yahoo? Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history

#179

Post by TekMol »

SCdF wrote: post #55
TekMol wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I an active user? Yes Am I an active user? Yes Am I an active user? Yes Am I an active user? Yes

That is a very nicely formatted response. It--- at least to me--- proves my point that active user is not a useful metric, as all of those people have very different values and drive growth (or don't) in very different ways, and so have no use being clumped together. We didn't even get to talk about differing user demographics or time, data by country, trends inside countries etc.

That's like saying 'pounds' is not a useful metric because it does not tell you 'pounds of what'.
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