Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

#41

Post by gfosco » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 5:28 PM UTC

simonsarris wrote: post #14

66% of users are tuning in? That's great! Every time a Facebook usage topic comes up there's the usual round of scorn usually backed up by a strange display of plumage involving the sentence, "I just deleted my facebook yesterday/last month/last year/never used it." And that's okay. But I want to point out to my fellow HN-goers why facebook is so wonderful. There's also a note about privacy at the bottom[1] since tha…

The privacy argument invariably turns to someone talking about their privacy settings being perfect.... The elephant in the room is that you have no privacy FROM FACEBOOK, and they OWN YOUR DATA.

Soon enough, they'll be leveraging it in order to stay afloat....

Re: Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

#42

Post by philipbroadway » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 5:32 PM UTC

trebuch3t wrote: post #20

ajays wrote: post #5

My status updates have gone from about 1/day a couple of years ago, to about 1/week now. Even though I've blocked all apps, etc., I find FB to be too noisy. The only thing I like about FB is that I can keep track of friends' events, like babies, marriages, breakups, trips, etc.

Agreed. Facebook has turned into a stream of blabber and pictures of people's kids (no offence). What is NOT noisy is: * Path (just my close friends) * Pair (just my girlfriend) * Google+ (the "what's hot" news feed is actually pretty interesting)

Agree with these alternatives, but I left Path after I discovered the app uploads my Address book contacts. Lame. Such a pretty & functional UI too..

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-57372885-52/path-shares-ph...

Re: Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

#43

Post by no-espam » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 5:35 PM UTC

chaz wrote: post #22

The metric that continues to really impress me about Facebook: 58% of users log in each day (that's 526mm DAU out of 901mm MAU, according to its SEC filing). That's roughly the same percentage as it was in 2007, when I first heard that kind of stat. I love customer surveys, but I don't think people are good at estimating how they actually spend their time or how frequently they do things.

Do those people really log in to use Facebook or do they use Facebook as an authentication provider like Pinterest and other sites?

Re: Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

#44

Post by joshuahedlund » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 5:42 PM UTC

trebuch3t wrote: post #20

ajays wrote: post #5

My status updates have gone from about 1/day a couple of years ago, to about 1/week now. Even though I've blocked all apps, etc., I find FB to be too noisy. The only thing I like about FB is that I can keep track of friends' events, like babies, marriages, breakups, trips, etc.

Agreed. Facebook has turned into a stream of blabber and pictures of people's kids (no offence). What is NOT noisy is: * Path (just my close friends) * Pair (just my girlfriend) * Google+ (the "what's hot" news feed is actually pretty interesting)

I found the Google+ "what's hot" feed interesting too, until they went through yet another redesign and I couldn't find it anymore. I didn't have enough interest to ask the Internet how to find it again, so I slowly just forgot about it. Now I don't felt like I've lost any utility from not giving it three minutes of my time every day.

Re: Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

#45

Post by gurkendoktor » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 5:44 PM UTC

I find the idea of Facebook getting boring very interesting. Do people complain about email or gmail getting boring? Their address book? Skype? "Safari is boring these days"? For many people, Facebook is a medium. My girlfriend is busy on the iPad writing stuff in her family's private group. I am just going through the timeline looking for interesting articles just like I do on HN.

Now I wonder what people who consider Facebook "boring" did before they left. Play games or be there just for the novelty of it? Then this is not a loss for existing users.

I can understand the privacy concerns and the "not useful" answer though, with the terrible usability & iOS app.

Re: Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

#46

Post by debacle » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 5:45 PM UTC

simonsarris wrote: post #14

66% of users are tuning in? That's great! Every time a Facebook usage topic comes up there's the usual round of scorn usually backed up by a strange display of plumage involving the sentence, "I just deleted my facebook yesterday/last month/last year/never used it." And that's okay. But I want to point out to my fellow HN-goers why facebook is so wonderful. There's also a note about privacy at the bottom[1] since tha…

66% of users are tuning in, not 66% of user accounts.

I might even go so far as to say that this is only accounting for 66% of active users.

Of my ~30 or so friends, only 5-10 use Facebook actively and only 2-3 post daily. Most never post.

Re: Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

#47

Post by vibrunazo » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 5:50 PM UTC

simonsarris wrote: post #14

66% of users are tuning in? That's great! Every time a Facebook usage topic comes up there's the usual round of scorn usually backed up by a strange display of plumage involving the sentence, "I just deleted my facebook yesterday/last month/last year/never used it." And that's okay. But I want to point out to my fellow HN-goers why facebook is so wonderful. There's also a note about privacy at the bottom[1] since tha…

> Without facebook

You're confusing "without facebook" with "without the internet". Without facebook, yourself, your family and friends - would just be using something else.

People leaving facebook are not doing so to become socially isolated. But because there's other means to keep in touch without the whole facebook stream overhead.

Re: Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

#48

Post by gurkendoktor » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 5:51 PM UTC

simonsarris wrote: post #14

66% of users are tuning in? That's great! Every time a Facebook usage topic comes up there's the usual round of scorn usually backed up by a strange display of plumage involving the sentence, "I just deleted my facebook yesterday/last month/last year/never used it." And that's okay. But I want to point out to my fellow HN-goers why facebook is so wonderful. There's also a note about privacy at the bottom[1] since tha…

> Literally, facebook is a modern "An open letter to my friends" system. And it's great at it.

I actually think this is Twitter (warning: I stopped using it a year ago). Usually if you have followers you can assume that they read your stuff sometimes. Not so with Facebook. You may have been purged from your best buddy's newsfeed just because you usually have little interaction on FB.

I sometimes feel the urge to post a cat picture just so that people who don't care about politics will Like it and thus keep me in their newsfeed. :( (Assuming that this is how it works.)

Re: Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

#49

Post by cdcarter » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 5:53 PM UTC

yashchandra wrote: post #27

For me, fb is useful only to keep an eye on what is going on with my family/friends specially for things such as cute pictures of their kids, marriage/birthday events etc. My wife uses her fb time to update me on those. So personally, I hardly login to fb anymore.

This is what Facebook's utility for all of us is. Just replace cute photos of their kids with cute photos of your crush (or ex), and replace marriage events with house parties, and you've hit what the twenty-somethings on fb do daily. Anything else is to justify being there.

Re: Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out

#50

Post by nkwiatek » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 5:54 PM UTC

edibrac wrote: post #26

simonsarris wrote: post #14

66% of users are tuning in? That's great! Every time a Facebook usage topic comes up there's the usual round of scorn usually backed up by a strange display of plumage involving the sentence, "I just deleted my facebook yesterday/last month/last year/never used it." And that's okay. But I want to point out to my fellow HN-goers why facebook is so wonderful. There's also a note about privacy at the bottom[1] since tha…

IMHO privacy alone IS enough to negate the utility of Facebook. Privacy is not about just your name, gender and address. Nor even about what movies, music and books you enjoy. It's down to how you express yourself in words and what can be inferred by them. Your pics might seen harmless, but there's plenty you can infer from them too. Sure, there's controls on which groups of facebook friends can see things, but in th…

> this all goes into a FB database somewhere, which who knows has access to it, or backups to it. Enjoy being harvested voluntarily.

Are you being ironic with a statement like this, or are you serious?

The second there's even so much as a bug that affects some obscure privacy setting, the TechCrunch pitchforks are out, and the brand is on the line. Do you really think that FB is just gonna let anyone rummage through their user's private data, just, you know, for fun? Can you even imagine how damaging that would be? Why do you think FB blows millions of dollars on engineer salaries to work on privacy features — which you just dismiss in a sentence like they're nothing?

The way I see it, you're already in a database somewhere, many of them, but the difference is you don't have access to that data — you don't even know what data exists, where. Facebook comes along and says "OK, fine, we'll play along, except we'll let the users decide what data they provide, and we'll try to help them benefit from it as much as possible" — and suddenly, Facebook's the bad guy. All the government, banking, insurance, direct mail databases out there and people have to go after FB, where every click has an associated privacy setting. It boggles the mind.