How this level of title editorializing is possible on HN? It just picks Tiktok purely as a bait, but actual research includes multiple websites and also luxury brands.
Large shares of consumers use social media out of a fear of missing out
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Re: Large shares of consumers use social media out of a fear of missing out
#42Re: Large shares of consumers use social media out of a fear of missing out
#43Lots of people would be willing to do lots of things for lots of money until you actually give them the opportunity to do so. It's easy to spend hypothetical money.
I have literally asked people "would you pay $5 for this?" they say yes, then I tell them to buy it and they say no. When this kept happening I realised the only thing that matters in sales is... actually making sales. Everything else is window dressing.
Probably they're interpreting your first question as "would it be reasonable for me to offer this for sale for $5?" They may not be personally interested in buying it but can still tell you whether a price seems fair or not.
For instance, I think it would probably be fair for you to sell your car for the blue book value... but I'm not offering to buy your car. I don't need another.
Re: Large shares of consumers use social media out of a fear of missing out
#44Lots of people would be willing to do lots of things for lots of money until you actually give them the opportunity to do so. It's easy to spend hypothetical money.
I have literally asked people "would you pay $5 for this?" they say yes, then I tell them to buy it and they say no. When this kept happening I realised the only thing that matters in sales is... actually making sales. Everything else is window dressing.
> then I tell them to buy it and they say no
Were you asking them to open their wallet and hand you 5 dollars and that's it, or were you asking them to go to an unfamiliar website, click around, enter their credit card information, and then spend time learning how to use the software, and do it all right now?
Re: Large shares of consumers use social media out of a fear of missing out
#45[flagged]
Re: Large shares of consumers use social media out of a fear of missing out
#46This is not the dystopian future we imagined, yet here we are. I’m scared to think where we will end up in 20-40 years time as our marketing and psychology capability increases.
The personalized AI generated TikTok feed of dopamine hits is closer than you think.
Re: Large shares of consumers use social media out of a fear of missing out
#47[flagged]
Aka "against national propaganda"
Re: Large shares of consumers use social media out of a fear of missing out
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have literally asked people "would you pay $5 for this?" they say yes, then I tell them to buy it and they say no. When this kept happening I realised the only thing that matters in sales is... actually making sales. Everything else is window dressing.
> then I tell them to buy it and they say no Were you asking them to open their wallet and hand you 5 dollars and that's it, or were you asking them to go to an unfamiliar website, click around, enter their credit card information, and then spend time learning how to use the software, and do it all right now?
The difference between "Would you pay for this if it was instantly applied and took 0 effort to implement" versus "would you go through and pay to achieve outcome?"
Re: Large shares of consumers use social media out of a fear of missing out
#49I mean, yeah, that's an incredibly small amount of money to get everyone else to do something. I'd pay $1000 to have everyone lose their cars. Heck, if you could guarantee it would happen, I will pay $100k today so that everyone in the USA can no longer drive their cars.
That means the opposite. The disutility is really low and the network utility is positive. If I charged you $29 to have all your peers lose Tik Tok, you'd say no. $29 is too much because Tik Tok doesn't hurt that much.
Think about how much you'd pay for something that actually hurt. Would your ceiling be $28? I think not.
Re: Large shares of consumers use social media out of a fear of missing out
#50One of the contributing factors here is that we keep calling these "social networks," but that's not really what they're being used for.
If you look at an average user's feed, it probably breaks down into 30% traditional advertising, 20% nontraditional advertising (via influencers and friends shilling for their employers and promoting their side hustles), 30% content by people they have no social relationship with (celebrities, etc.), 15% low-quality posts from acquaintances, and 5% content from legitimate friends.
That is a whole lot of junk to have to sift through just to get the occasional scrap of legitimate social interaction.
These are advertising networks first, and social networks a distant second, even though they ostensibly involve social graphs.
So I can understand the fatigue people feel about having to scroll and scroll and scroll just to stay in the loop with people they have an existing social relationship with and genuinely want to know what's going on in their lives.