The Facebook experiment has failed • Hacker News Board

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#201

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 4:32 PM UTC

abrahamsen wrote: post #105

iamshs wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it really is not. Facebook friends can be equally curated and pruned. Facebook offers its own variant of circles, and importantly my friends are on facebook which can facilitate discussion. Even though everyone has gmail and Google is forcing G+ down everybody's throat, G+ has not taken off. There is no material to discuss on G+. Besides, the same problems will creep in with G+ too. Do you want to pick and cho…

The keywords are "can be". Or as the author put it "unless you jump through hoops". The Google+ interface makes a difference. The majority of stuff on Google+ is shared privately, because the interface invites doing it that way. (The interface also invites having a "loudmouth" circle with zero notification level, so you can follow people without having their posts in your default stream).

[deleted]

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#202

Post by saraid216 » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 4:34 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #175

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #169

Facebook is performance art. It's a phonebook of people I lost contact with many years ago. It's also a quasi-broken emailing list program. It might be a decent advertising platform for small businesses. Don't know. It's not a news feed. It's not stories relevant to me. It's not a way to actually have friends. It's not a place where people create things and share (mostly). People might think it's those things. Hell,…

Google+ really was on to something with its circles: My friends are easily divisible into groups, and, apart from life events like getting engaged, what I want to share is only really relevant to a specific subset. I know Facebook has groups you can share specific things with, but it's not a feature Facebook has focused on, so even I don't really use it. I could use google +, but no one else does, and there's not muc…

> I could use google +, but no one else does, and there's not much of a point to shouting into an empty room.

There hasn't been a generation growing up with Google+ yet.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#203

Post by saraid216 » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 4:37 PM UTC

nextw33k wrote: post #69

graue wrote: post #35

People really just don't seem to understand that experiences with social media are specific to the individual. I guess it's understandable. I see the same Google Maps as everyone else does. I see the same Hacker News as everyone else who visits HN. But Facebook isn't like that. Your Facebook timeline is based entirely on your friends and how you interact with Facebook. And so, every few weeks it seems, we get these p…

I feel that you are missing his point. There is a trend towards emotional populist content on social networks. It's interesting to you because it's your friends and it feels personal. However in a broader context its creating a society that is inward looking (walled garden of your friends) and concerned with re-enforcing social norms (the like button). How does this activity improve us as a society? Where is the crea…

> There is a trend towards emotional populist content on the internet.

Fixed that for you.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#204

Post by saraid216 » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 4:39 PM UTC

smith7018 wrote: post #182

graue wrote: post #35

People really just don't seem to understand that experiences with social media are specific to the individual. I guess it's understandable. I see the same Google Maps as everyone else does. I see the same Hacker News as everyone else who visits HN. But Facebook isn't like that. Your Facebook timeline is based entirely on your friends and how you interact with Facebook. And so, every few weeks it seems, we get these p…

Thank you. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm the only person out there who has used the "unfriend" button before. I've deleted hundreds of people; many of whom I only met for one night 5 years ago or didn't even talk to way back in high school. Now, my Facebook feed has content that only features people I care to hear from and "interest pages," which is sorta meh. It's really not this social media wasteland I keep readi…

I never friended people I didn't wish to hear from to begin with. I've only ever unfriended one person, and I've never broken the 200-friend threshold, so I can't claim to have unfriended hundreds.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#205

Post by moron4hire » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 4:39 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #175

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #169

Facebook is performance art. It's a phonebook of people I lost contact with many years ago. It's also a quasi-broken emailing list program. It might be a decent advertising platform for small businesses. Don't know. It's not a news feed. It's not stories relevant to me. It's not a way to actually have friends. It's not a place where people create things and share (mostly). People might think it's those things. Hell,…

Google+ really was on to something with its circles: My friends are easily divisible into groups, and, apart from life events like getting engaged, what I want to share is only really relevant to a specific subset. I know Facebook has groups you can share specific things with, but it's not a feature Facebook has focused on, so even I don't really use it. I could use google +, but no one else does, and there's not muc…

>> but no one else does

You and I apparently have drastically different pictures of G+.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#206

Post by ryguytilidie » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 4:39 PM UTC

http://cl.ly/image/0k3p1b0b012B

This is my news feed at the moment. I tweeted a similar picture on Friday. At the top, there is a piece of content from Deadspin, which, while I do like them, but I don't need every update from. Beside that, it is 100% ads, six in total. Any other site, this would be considered completely unacceptable spam. The only ad I'm even remotely interested in on my sidebar is the Titleist irons and that is only because I recently bought a set, meaning i won't need another, so that's a pretty sure sign this ad is ineffective. Same with T. Rowe Price. I just opened a Schwab account, so I assume that was why I was targeted, but does it really make sense for T. Rowe Price to try to advertise for people who JUST opened a Schwab account? I'm really starting to wonder how this could possibly be useful to anyone.

I remember on my first day at Facebook, I sat in orientation while they explained to us why Google's advertising platform would be overtaken by Facebook's, and the idea was that they could figure out what people wanted to buy or were looking at, and then serve them an ad for something relevant. Cool idea and all, but 3 years later, this has clearly not happened, AT ALL. Facebook is still paying an engineering team hundreds of millions of dollars to figure out ways to more efficiently cram my browser full of spam. How is this useful for anyone except Facebook stockholders who want money?

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#207

Post by snowwrestler » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 4:42 PM UTC

jeswin wrote: post #84

Author here. Didn't think this would show up on HN. These were my thoughts when I wrote it: 1. Most stuff being shared is of no value to most people. Does not encourage exchange of good ideas. Sharing, as it works now looks like a fad. It has peaked. Most people I know are bored now, it's just the inertia that keeps them there. 2. If someone is genuinely interested in something, they will seek out good communities to…

> 1. Most stuff being shared is of no value to most people. Does not encourage exchange of good ideas.

These two concepts are not at all the same thing. Social communications between friends and family are not idea-based, they are fact-based. "How was your day?" "How's your sister?" "What happened to your face?" "How are you feeling?" "Did you get that new car?" etc. People want just want a taste of the other person's life and emotional state. Facebook is great for that.

I agree that Facebook is not great for exchanging and discussing ideas. As you point out, that is why forums like HN have grown at the same time as Facebook has grown.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#208

Post by scholia » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 4:42 PM UTC

andyhmltn wrote: post #75

onedev wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My FB feed is phenomenal. I hide people that post spam, and unfollow pages that spam me. What's left is the people I care about and the content from pages I care about (e.g. The Economist posts really good content every day, so does Rap Genius, and brands like Nike/Adidas; all of which I like-- in the traditional sense). It's basically my "newspaper". I even follow HN and it feeds me the newest stuff from HN alongsid…

You're a very lucky person then! Sadly I'm at around the 1,000 friends mark and I have a feeling it'd be a bit too much work to make my timeline useful again.

So why did you friend a load of people you don't really know?

It's like going to a great restaurant, ordering five times as much as you can eat and then complaining about the food.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#209

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 4:43 PM UTC

andyhmltn wrote: post #75

onedev wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My FB feed is phenomenal. I hide people that post spam, and unfollow pages that spam me. What's left is the people I care about and the content from pages I care about (e.g. The Economist posts really good content every day, so does Rap Genius, and brands like Nike/Adidas; all of which I like-- in the traditional sense). It's basically my "newspaper". I even follow HN and it feeds me the newest stuff from HN alongsid…

You're a very lucky person then! Sadly I'm at around the 1,000 friends mark and I have a feeling it'd be a bit too much work to make my timeline useful again.

[deleted]

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#210

Post by ywang0414 » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 4:44 PM UTC

I completely agree with the article. I've always found FB to be useless and noisy. I have a lot of friends. But they all have different interest. And I only want to share things that are relevant to them. When I post something on Facebook, I rarely get a response, largely because it's just noise to 90% of my FB friends. At the same time, FB is actually a closed social networking, meaning that the things I share cannot reach people who might actually be interested, and would contribute back. Our startup is trying to solve this problem. Will post on HN once we think we are ready.