Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

#51

Post by coolso » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 10:30 PM UTC

sebleon wrote: post #42

coolso wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Headlines are why I rarely read online news articles anymore, and typically just view the comment sections, either here on HN, or Slashdot, etc. It never used to be this bad. One would think that with public trust in the media at an all time low, they would make an effort to be less sneaky and clickbaity, at the very least with their headlines, but....... nope.

> public trust in the media at an all time low Is that a fact or opinion? Likely they're seeing ad-revenue increasing with the clickbait titles, giving them a data-driven reason to pursue this (short-sighted) strategy. Long-term, they may lose their readership once they catch on.

Looks like it hit the absolute bottom in 2016 [0], with a slight uptick in 2017 according to some [1][2], but still, overall, according to various studies it's been at an all-time low during these last couple of years.

[0] http://news.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-medi...

[1] https://www.poynter.org/news/poynter-releases-new-study-exam...

[2] https://www.fastcompany.com/40503393/americans-are-more-trus...

Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

#52

Post by rm999 » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 10:30 PM UTC

firasd wrote: post #33

From my readings, something Facebook has been struggling with for a couple years is getting people to post more personal updates. Thus their Newsfeed changes de-prioritizing articles, and thus (I figure) their experiments such as showing short posts in large font sizes, and enabling MySpace-like gradient backgrounds on text posts... This dynamic makes me recall something: Anyone remember how back in the day (like 200…

>That whole ethos of just having informal personal conversations with college friends on Facebook is gone.

The wall was never a good way to do this. It's neither as powerful nor as flexible as pretty much any competing way for a small group of people to communicate, including chat programs, email, txt, snapchat, etc.

Facebook's deprioritization of the wall and buy-in on messenger/whatsapp, instagram, and the newsfeed was very smart. I suspect they are ok with people moving off posting on facebook to posting on instagram and chatting privately.

Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

#53

Post by jug » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 10:34 PM UTC

submeta wrote: post #47

firasd wrote: post #33

From my readings, something Facebook has been struggling with for a couple years is getting people to post more personal updates. Thus their Newsfeed changes de-prioritizing articles, and thus (I figure) their experiments such as showing short posts in large font sizes, and enabling MySpace-like gradient backgrounds on text posts... This dynamic makes me recall something: Anyone remember how back in the day (like 200…

> something Facebook been struggling with for a couple years is getting people to post more personal updates. This is what I perceive as well.

Thirded. It feels like a poorly kept secret. Last in the row of pushes is my Facebook has started showing how I can now post to groups of people more easily. Just in case posting for all friends to see is holding me back, you know. (yes friend lists exist since eons but this seems more ad-hoc... Unsure if I'm in an A/B test)

Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

#54

Post by cycrutchfield » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 10:38 PM UTC

NicoJuicy wrote: post #32

I wonder if the cause really is the news feed. What if it was the first decline ever and then they made some quick algorithm changes. Then they went public with it, before releasing the numbers

This is the most likely explanation.

Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

#55

Post by nickysielicki » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 10:39 PM UTC

I am effectively banned from facebook.

I was on the platform a few years ago, but deleted my account and didn't miss it at all. Then, a couple months ago, I became interested in a new Chinese amateur radio transceiver, and the best source of English information was through a Facebook group of a couple hundred owners. So naturally, I joined facebook, joined the group, and had several weeks of a really enjoyable experience. I didn't add any friends or pictures or anything like that; I had no interest in really using Facebook with people I knew in real life, and as a result my newsfeed was an endless list of really great discussions about amateur satellites, straight key century club, Xiegu transceivers, etc. I think what set it apart from something like Reddit is the civility that comes when you make hams post with their real name.

Then, all of a sudden, "You Can't Log In Right Now". I was actually forced to upload an image of my face to get back into the site. This was a sort of funny thing to ask, because I didn't have any images of myself on the site up to that point-- so how are they supposed to know what I look like, anyway? (I'm being sarcastic here, I'm sure that Facebook has my face profiled in their databases somewhere.) So I uploaded my photo, a handful of days went by, and then I was allowed back in, and again started using Facebook as an awesome discussion platform full of meaningful interactions with people that shared a common interest with me.

A couple weeks go by, and yet again, "You Can't Log In Right Now". I upload my face again, but this time I've never been unbanned. I think it's been this way for over a month now. I still get email notifications with subject lines like, "See what people are talking about in your group AMSAT North America", but when I click "Read Post", I'm not able to view the content. (I also can't unsubscribe from the emails, as editing email settings is hidden behind a login prompt, which I am obviously not able to get through. I also can't file a bug report about the lack of ability to unsubscribe... because that, too, is hidden behind a login prompt.)

It's just so incredibly ironic that as soon as I started using facebook for content I was interested in, instead of seeing political posts from people I went to middle school with, I get permabanned on suspicion of being a fake account.

Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

#56

Post by floren » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 10:40 PM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #46

gonehome wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was prior to chat though, and more of a desperate attempt to chat in an interface that didn't do a good job supporting it. When chat and then messenger came along there was no need to do that anymore.

Most of the people who used facebook in 2004–2006 had (and used) other ways to chat via their computers or cellphones. Most people’s profiles listed their phone numbers, email addresses and various chat service handles. Facebook wall conversations were not used as a poor imitation of private chat, but a separate form of quasi-public communication.

Yeah, thinking back, Facebook was largely a convenient way to find and keep track of my friends' IM handles. And their phone numbers, back in the day when losing a phone meant losing all contacts because they're stored on the device.

Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

#57

Post by adventured » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 10:41 PM UTC

tanilama wrote: post #35

Firebrand wrote: post #30

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter usage are all down. People are just spending less time on social media apps for some reasons these days. https://www.similarweb.com/blog/social-media-usage

That is interesting. Too much noise , too much distraction?

It's a cesspool, imo. My Facebook is overwhelmed by extremely ugly political obnoxiousness these days, which makes it almost worthless (I'd have to hide 3/4 of the conversations/posts by friends). Between that and the junk content and general corporate spam, maybe 3-5% of what I've seen on FB in the last year has been legitimately valuable social content. The majority of people I know hate Facebook as a product now. They don't just not want to use it, they hate it. Facebook knows what their product has become, it's so bad now they stopped trying to pretend otherwise. They're basically facing their Microsoft Internet tsunami moment, they either quickly adapt or fade from here. If they fade, what will happen is a dozen new social competitors will spring up and begin stripping fringe corners off the core FB network, amounting to tens of millions of users in eg North America. It'll simply break up at the edges, and retain a large foundational user base that will be a lot less engaged.

Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

#58

Post by Freestyler_3 » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 10:41 PM UTC

tanilama wrote: post #35

Firebrand wrote: post #30

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter usage are all down. People are just spending less time on social media apps for some reasons these days. https://www.similarweb.com/blog/social-media-usage

That is interesting. Too much noise , too much distraction?

The only people left now are people who REALLY like to show what they are up to.

I can only hope things are not going to be so self centered anymore.

Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

#59

Post by JoshTko » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 10:42 PM UTC

Main problem is that Facebook is too public in that most friends are actually acquaintances. People are less likely to share intimate updates with acquaintances and instead will only post generic neutral, non-controversial things which dont’t drive deep engagement.

Re: Facebook User Growth, Time Spent Fall on News Feed Changes

#60

Post by underwater » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 10:43 PM UTC

jsemrau wrote: post #7

flunhat wrote: post #3

Surely this has something to do with the sheer number of users they have, right? There's only like 8 billion people on Earth and Facebook has 2 billion monthly active users. If you take away 1.5 billion people in China who can't/don't use Facebook, this means that it has 2 billion out of like ~6.5 billion possible users. And many of those people are either children ( that bad to me (unless I'm missing something impor…

I have a company page/account where I daily automatically post updates. I guess that counts into this number.

Pages are not counted as a user in their DAU counts.