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Reasons to think that, in terms of influence if not wealth, Facebook has peaked

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Reasons to think that, in terms of influence if not wealth, Facebook has peaked

#61

Post by nitwit005 »

clay_the_ripper wrote: post #17

I’m no fan of Facebook, but I don’t agree with the premise of the article. The power of Facebook lies in its network effect: something on the order of 2 billion have active Facebook accounts. Whether or not people are spending more or less time on the platform doesn’t matter as much as people seem to think it does. What matters is the fact that they can associate web browsing actions (pages visited etc) with your Fac…

> Just having a Facebook account that you “don’t use” allows a massive amount of value (from an advertisers perspective) to be unlocked.

Increasingly, this is not the case: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-belgium/facebook...

Re: Reasons to think that, in terms of influence if not wealth, Facebook has peaked

#62

Post by nitwit005 »

omarforgotpwd wrote: post #40

Facebook is just getting started. Imagine you have a dataset that can identify over a billion people around the world simply by looking at their face. When you walk into McDonalds, cameras analyze you and the people you enter with. Oh, there's John Smith and his friend Tom. He loves the McFlurry. Instantly the digital menus rearrange to feature a large McFlurry, animating and advertising a deal on the largest size. F…

You can make the "just getting started" argument for just about any company.

What you describe does not seem to require the involvement of Facebook. It doesn't even seem to require cameras. Just ask them to swipe their credit card to start using the automated ordering system.

Re: Reasons to think that, in terms of influence if not wealth, Facebook has peaked

#63

Post by coldtea »

clay_the_ripper wrote: post #17

I’m no fan of Facebook, but I don’t agree with the premise of the article. The power of Facebook lies in its network effect: something on the order of 2 billion have active Facebook accounts. Whether or not people are spending more or less time on the platform doesn’t matter as much as people seem to think it does. What matters is the fact that they can associate web browsing actions (pages visited etc) with your Fac…

>I’m no fan of Facebook, but I don’t agree with the premise of the article. The power of Facebook lies in its network effect: something on the order of 2 billion have active Facebook accounts. Whether or not people are spending more or less time on the platform doesn’t matter as much as people seem to think it does.

It matters if those "2 billion people" can abandon it in a hearbeat for some other platform.

Re: Reasons to think that, in terms of influence if not wealth, Facebook has peaked

#64

Post by askafriend »

scarface74 wrote: post #42

Without going to deeply into the content of the article, just because a company has “peaked” doesn’t mean it’s “failing”. IBM peaked decades ago, but still has a somewhat successful business. Microsoft peaked in terms of influence probably a decade ago, but is still important. I doubt that Facebook will go the way of MySpace or Yahoo anytime soon.

Not only is Microsoft still important, their stock performance has been pretty phenomenal in the past decade.

Re: Reasons to think that, in terms of influence if not wealth, Facebook has peaked

#65

Post by [deleted] »

scarface74 wrote: post #42

Without going to deeply into the content of the article, just because a company has “peaked” doesn’t mean it’s “failing”. IBM peaked decades ago, but still has a somewhat successful business. Microsoft peaked in terms of influence probably a decade ago, but is still important. I doubt that Facebook will go the way of MySpace or Yahoo anytime soon.

[deleted]

Re: Reasons to think that, in terms of influence if not wealth, Facebook has peaked

#66

Post by dang »

zombieprocesses wrote: post #50
dang wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Articles don't have to be news in the narrow sense to do well here. They need to gratify intellectual curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I wasn't talking about hacker news. I was talking about the bbc. I was asking why the bbc published a non-news story, not why it was here. I was just saying the news industry should publish news rather than conjecture or predictions.

Ah I see! Well, you'd have to take it up with them, but the BBC publishes all kinds of things.

Re: Reasons to think that, in terms of influence if not wealth, Facebook has peaked

#67

Post by halflings »

namrog84 wrote: post #34
clay_the_ripper wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the MAUs are half of what they claim (they claim over 2 billion monthly active) they still have a moat the size of a freakin ocean. I think it’s safe to say they have users “in the billions”.

I believe half is even optimistic. I'd venture a gamble that at most 25% are unique and original people. Even my non technical friends often have 2-4 accounts. For work, for friends, for forgotten passwords, etc... And then of course bots and bots and bots. Of course it depends on how they define a user and an account. If I logon only 1 of my accounts in a given month or 10. Do they count as 1 or 10 in either case?

Anecdote rebuttal to an anecdote: None of my personal friends have more than one account on facebook.

Facebook estimates than 10% of the accounts are duplicates [0], so that wouldn't match with most people (~50%?) having 2 to 4 accounts.

[0] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/11/02/facebook-ad...

Re: Reasons to think that, in terms of influence if not wealth, Facebook has peaked

#68

Post by ryanwaggoner »

dasil003 wrote: post #54
omarforgotpwd wrote: post #40

Facebook is just getting started. Imagine you have a dataset that can identify over a billion people around the world simply by looking at their face. When you walk into McDonalds, cameras analyze you and the people you enter with. Oh, there's John Smith and his friend Tom. He loves the McFlurry. Instantly the digital menus rearrange to feature a large McFlurry, animating and advertising a deal on the largest size. F…

Why would Macdonald’s pay for that? Tom is already in McDonald’s and is going to buy what he wants. There’s no incremental value in making the menu confusing by changing it all the time.

They’re not changing the menu, they’re just subtly highlighting things, offering discounts, etc. And yeah, he’s in the store already, but if they can sell him MORE on that visit, that’s good.

How much do you think McDonalds would pay for a magic camera + menu that boosted all their store revenue by 5% overnight?

Re: Reasons to think that, in terms of influence if not wealth, Facebook has peaked

#69

Post by greggarious »

I deleted my Facebook account two years ago (Valentine's day 2016). Before doing so I reached out to my close/medium ties and exchanged numbers, encouraging them to check out Signal as a way to contact me. Some of them demurred (nothing to hide) but pretty much everyone adopted Signal after the election, heh.

I don't have a huge amount of "friends" now, but I have a small group of people I text or call occasionally. I feel happier and more connected than I did using Facebook.

Re: Reasons to think that, in terms of influence if not wealth, Facebook has peaked

#70

Post by rock_hard »

scythe wrote: post #55

Facebook just needs to lose its "evil" image. I could throw out ideas but let's face it everyone does that and I have zero experience running a social network. Right now the biggest obstacle facing Facebook is that people are starting to think that using Facebook is bad for you and bad for society. Facebook cannot survive in such a climate indefinitely. If it's true, make it false. If it's false, prove it.

Well said.

Though I could imagine that only <1% of FB users are aware of all the headlines we get served here on HN every day...so it’s probably not a real issue

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