How Facebook Gets Away With Being Broken On Purpose • Hacker News Board

Re: How Facebook Gets Away With Being Broken On Purpose

#71

Post by brazzy » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 8:10 AM UTC

dm8 wrote: post #33

I don't understand the hoopla behind edgerank. Personally, I really like it. My feed is much cleaner. I get all status updates from the most important people in my life. And from other friends I get the most important updates. As far as sponsored stories go, I prefer to those ugly banner ads. Much better UX and lot of times sponsored stories are relevant to me.

The hoopla is not from normal users. They don't understand it, and generally like it if they do.

It's advertisers that are frothing at the mouth. Personally, I think it's a very good thing Facebook puts the interests of users above those of advertisers, at least up to some point.

Re: How Facebook Gets Away With Being Broken On Purpose

#72

Post by brazzy » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 8:12 AM UTC

RougeFemme wrote: post #49

tomasien wrote: post #45

If users wanted Twitter-like, see 100% of posts as the default, Facebook would have done it. They maximize for engagement 1st and then they monetize that engagement. For example, if people were most engaged seeing every post (which they wouldn't be, because of the nature of Facebook where you're mostly friends with people you don't care about), they could have far more Timeline "Suggested" of "Featured" posts than th…

I think most users do want Twitter-like 100% visibility. And, at least when they first signed up (for those who signed up more than a year ago), they thought they were getting that. I think that the typical user has just given up on trying to keep up with and compensate the every-changing features and have settled for what they get and/or moved on to something else.

> I think most users do want Twitter-like 100% visibility.

Well, you're wrong.

Re: How Facebook Gets Away With Being Broken On Purpose

#73

Post by brazzy » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 8:18 AM UTC

andrewflnr wrote: post #61

All Facebook gets from me in all this is that I spend less and less time on Facebook, because all I do is look at the news feed, and if there's only five new items from yesterday, then I leave. I wish I could say I was sticking it to them for being jerks, but I know they don't really care about me or need me. And it's not like all my friends are going to go to Google+, or heaven forbid Diaspora. Excuse me while I go…

I suspect that the opposite is actually the case; If every time you looked at the newsfeed you saw 50 new items of which 45 are uninteresting, you'd leave and not come back the next day.

Re: How Facebook Gets Away With Being Broken On Purpose

#74

Post by cocoflunchy » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 8:29 AM UTC

ChrisCinelli wrote: post #64

snprbob86 wrote: post #2

Personally, I think Facebook would be broken if every message every person or group I'm connected to made it directly into my feed. The feed has been algorithmic for a very long time and paid placement is neither a surprising nor nefarious input to that algorithm. Paid posts are clearly labeled and, even if paid, don't guarantee distribution volume, but do provide analytics. If you don't like the results you're getti…

Sure, but I would like to be able to set if I want by default see New feeds or Most recent post.Currently if I change to "SORT BY: MOST RECENT", it goes back to TOP STORIES after a day or so.

Yeah this is really annoying, but fortunately there's a Chrome extension that takes care of it.

Re: How Facebook Gets Away With Being Broken On Purpose

#75

Post by ElissaShevinsky » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 8:44 AM UTC

zipop wrote: post #53

This is what happens when you build a business on top of free users then attempt to make money later - not that there is anything wrong with that.

It's a good business model ;) The issues with it are exacerbated by the promise they made to always be free (which makes it problematic to offer a tier of paid services even if users would be interested.)

They're getting around this by offering paid services that are outside their basic offering (services for business, messaging users outside your friend group, etc.)

See their post about always being free: https://www.facebook.com/facebook/posts/10150420085741729

Re: How Facebook Gets Away With Being Broken On Purpose

#76

Post by ElissaShevinsky » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 8:51 AM UTC

adjwilli wrote: post #25

Facebook has every right to promote paid posts, and Google has every right to promote paid links despite not exercising it. And we as users have every right to decide whether we find the Facebook feed and Google search results relevant and useful based on that. When Facebook's policy starts effecting the quality of their services for users and companies, people will stop using it, just as if Google's search results l…

This is a very useful insight.

If brands can't rely on Facebook to reliably deliver messaging to a significant number of their fans, then these brands will spend less resources (both effort and money) on cultivating fan bases on Facebook. Instead they'll focus on Twitter, Instagram or just reduce the scope of their social media campaigns in favor of something with more optimized results.

Re: How Facebook Gets Away With Being Broken On Purpose

#77

Post by Semaphor » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 9:57 AM UTC

ryanmolden wrote: post #69

Semaphor wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - You can switch your feed to 'most recent' which ignores edgeRank, and simply displays posts in reverse chronological order, like FB used to, like tumblr does, twitter did (not sure about twitter right now), etc. That's not true. I use most recent and while it's probably filtering less, it still filters.

It also resets itself to Top Stories say, every day or so. I would say I am surprised that with all the engineering talent Facebook has they can't manage to remember this one setting I have made about 20 times, but I am not that naive.

Might be a bug on your end, I've been using recent stories for a very long time now (always seeing the same stuff on top posts got annoying) and never had to change it back to it.

Re: How Facebook Gets Away With Being Broken On Purpose

#78

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 12:47 PM UTC

brazzy wrote: post #72

RougeFemme wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most users do want Twitter-like 100% visibility. And, at least when they first signed up (for those who signed up more than a year ago), they thought they were getting that. I think that the typical user has just given up on trying to keep up with and compensate the every-changing features and have settled for what they get and/or moved on to something else.

> I think most users do want Twitter-like 100% visibility. Well, you're wrong.

[deleted]

Re: How Facebook Gets Away With Being Broken On Purpose

#79

Post by RestlessMind » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 3:54 PM UTC

brazzy wrote: post #70

andrewflnr wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to have to go to all my friends' walls to see what they're saying. I want it to be in my feed, unless I explicitly remove it, or give Facebook permission to choose. I'm not holding my breath, though.

No, you really, really don't. Because then your feed would be totally worthless, dominated by whoever pumps out the most stuff.

You are correct. But then, how does it help me when my feed shows posts just because someone paid Facebook to promote those posts? If a post is going to create bad experience for me, it will be a bad experience irrespective of whether its paid or free.

Re: How Facebook Gets Away With Being Broken On Purpose

#80

Post by brazzy » Sat, Mar 09, 2013, 4:13 PM UTC

RestlessMind wrote: post #79

brazzy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you really, really don't. Because then your feed would be totally worthless, dominated by whoever pumps out the most stuff.

You are correct. But then, how does it help me when my feed shows posts just because someone paid Facebook to promote those posts? If a post is going to create bad experience for me, it will be a bad experience irrespective of whether its paid or free.

The thing is: there's going to be a lot fewer such bad experiences when they cost the person wanting you to have them money. And it may provide an incentive to make promoted content a less bad experience, because in order to maximize revenue, Facebook had to balance the price of promoted content with its acceptance by users: content that is a better experience will cost less to promote because more of it can be shown to users before they get annoyed and leave Facebook.