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Facebook loses users for the first time

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#701

Post by mixedbit »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #688
ThinkBeat wrote: post #641

I always find the constant expectation of growth puzzling. and that it is a regular occurrence. For a long time, DELL grew and grew and got bigger. Then they plateaued (for a while) and the investors were mad. There are only so many people in the world who want an FB account. and only so many companies and people who need a DELL computer. Infinite high growth is impossible to sustain. Physically.

Yes, but the stock market works on the premise of growth, they try to raise money by virtue of being on the stock market, in order get the money required to finance that growth. I would think, that a company that has plateaued should take itself off the stock market, however this doesn't seem to be happening. Such a move would probably imply some drastic changes in how a company is goverend.

A company that does not grow can still share profits with the owners, so it makes sense also for not growing companies to stay on the stock market, so people can buy/sell these future profits.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#702

Post by neya »

randomsearch wrote: post #504

This is how the narrative of Facebook looks to me: Zuckerberg got lucky and then executed brilliantly, transitioned from nerd hacker to CEO amazingly well. He deserves a lot of credit for that. Since then, Facebook have innovated very little. Zuckerberg recognised this, and bought Instagram and Whatsapp in lieu of building an innovative company. The latter is clearly really difficult to do. Without a stream of new id…

From a technical (software) perspective, what you say aligns as well - I would claim that Facebook has done very little in terms of actual innovation of their core product since their popularity in early 2010s. I want you to think of a snapshot of facebook.com in 2010 where there wasn't much interactivity on the site and everything relied on good 'old hyperlinks and compare it with its present state - where everything is a clusterfuck of react components with unpredictable behaviour.

What I mean by that is - random disappearing newsfeed elements, and random exposé of page admins' personal accounts while commenting on something, bizarre disappearance of comments, loading signs everywhere and for everything and what not.

Sure, one can argue their investment into ReactJS could be considered as innovation. But, look at the business side of things - What value has ReactJS ACTUALLY provided to the site NOW compared to what it was in 2010? Not much. In 2010, Facebook was this minimalist website where you could add people and post stuff on each others' walls and yeah, occasionally message them. Today, it is a beast that is tons of megabytes downloaded to your computer on the first page visit with a "Messenger platform" - which is just rebranded basic messaging functionality and the clusterfuck that is "Facebook business suite" which is an unnecessarily complicated garbage UI for basic page admin functionality and their "Ads Platform" whose feature set various with where and how you use it. Not to forget Facebook's screwing up of m.facebook.com (the mobile site) where it is barely usable now and with half the features not working (eg. links in stories). Oh, and did I mention about Facebook Lite, Facebook App, Pages App, etc etc. and none of them look like a complete, polished product.

Facebook is a classic case of a taking a good product and screwing it up with needless complexity to the point where the core product is unusable. All this Meta push is just a nail in the coffin for users like me who have had enough - whose expectation wasn't much - just to stay in touch with friends and family. Sometimes, innovation could be as simple as maintaining a stable, core value proposition. I am noticing a lot of people around me are switching back (anecdotal observation) to plain old websites and blogs to express their thoughts and I love that.

I for one, can't wait for the downfall of Facebook, so we can go back to less bloated non-react-vue-js powered SPAs and just back to bare hyperlink powered static webpages :)

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#703

Post by wreath »

Waterluvian wrote: post #126
monkeybutton wrote: post #2

Its already frustrating enough having to use Facebook just to look up a restaurant's information, the set times for a concert, or whatever about a local business or event. If all that stuff starts to disappear behind a meta-verse wall, I might just leap off the nearest bridge instead.

Why have I never ever run into this problem in the ten years of not having Facebook? Admittedly I use Google for the answers. But I’ve never once needed FB. Is this a regional thing? Some areas exclusively use FB for a storefront?

I didn't have facebook for the last few years and I was wondering if I'd have to come back to it to be able to access local news/info. Never happened and never needed to. It's true though that in some countries that's the primary communication channel for businesses and even governments unfortunately.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#704

Post by grumple »

Breza wrote: post #687
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Controlling the VR metaverse... I just don't see it. Too much innovation. Too much invention. Remember FB can always purchase themselves into the market - pick up a few startups and bodge together a consistent product. I think the problem is that VR tech and apps will take too long to arrive to gain any traction with the wider public, before FB needs it. FB needs hundreds of millions/billions of users, VR hasn't pu…

I'm curious if you have any thoughts on why VR remains so niche. Decent VR hardware has been available for years. And yet relatively few people use it.

Most people are not nerds like us and prefer to interact with people in person. They cook dinner, they make babies, they read, they play with their dog. They use computers for work. Then you have the gamer segment.

VR games are generally casual / active. Not playable in most apartments due to space needed. Most gamers are into either shooters, dark souls style games, or moba-style games. And action/rpg - which is great in VR, but there are also only a couple of them.

Metaverse? Live in VR? Why? You can live in real life. People have other things to worry about.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#705

Post by technothrasher »

ho_schi wrote: post #658
busymom0 wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Microsoft is also almost an essential product company. You can either get a PC or a Mac. Or Linux but even that requires getting a PC anyway. Chromebook market is still tiny.

PC != Windows And was never. The Personal-Computer is an original product of International Business Machines (IBM) and not Microsoft. Contrary to most products shipped today it's architecture is open for industry standards and other companies. A huge success for IBM. Microsoft shipped the pre-installed and required operating-system. You can order desktops and laptops without an operating-sytem or Linux from Lenovo (f…

> That IBM sold the PC subsidiary was the worst mistake the could ever have done

That was years and years after they had already committed "the worst mistake they could have done", which was not buying Microsoft early on when they had the chance. This should be immediately obvious, as you're here complaining about people confusing Windows with PCs. After that, their failure to secure exclusive rights to Intel's x86 chips, their inability to keep up with all the clones on the market, and the missteps of the PCjr and OS/2, the eventual sell off the PC hardware business was inevitable.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#706

Post by tonyedgecombe »

aierou wrote: post #186
elwell wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it seem like I'm the only one who doesn't hate Zuckerberg? I'm genuinely confused. Can someone please explain this to me? I want to understand better.

It's funny because Zuckerberg isn't even a public figure. I'm sure someone will make some ethical claim, but I've read all the articles and they are hardly conclusive. It's probably better to just wait for a regulatory decision, otherwise you're just going to be reading someone else's agenda.

A fish rots from the head.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#707

Post by Breza »

signal11 wrote: post #660
randomsearch wrote: post #504

This is how the narrative of Facebook looks to me: Zuckerberg got lucky and then executed brilliantly, transitioned from nerd hacker to CEO amazingly well. He deserves a lot of credit for that. Since then, Facebook have innovated very little. Zuckerberg recognised this, and bought Instagram and Whatsapp in lieu of building an innovative company. The latter is clearly really difficult to do. Without a stream of new id…

Ironically, Facebook was great back when MySpace and Orkut wasn’t a great experience. I suspect that’s because it wouldn’t just let anybody in. Looking back, the decision to open Facebook up to everyone was (in my book) a bad one. I’ll use the nightclub analogy — a good social network, like a good nightclub, must have bouncers (of sorts) to ensure a quality experience. I realise the conflict between this and Metcalfe…

I remember being disappointed when they dropped the college requirement. But I do think that was the right decision. You'll only ever scale so much by only enrolling .edu users.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#708

Post by bin_bash »

FullyFunctional wrote: post #526
davedx wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with most of what you wrote up to this point: > He's a super smart and prescient thinker, so he can see VR is a good play He made a school yearbook on the internet and copied some features from existing social networks like MySpace. Facebook was just in the right place at the right time and executed well. The jury is very much still out on whether "VR is a good play", too. It might turn out to be a gigantic o…

Anyone remember that Next Big Thing was supposed to be 3D TVs? I think VR is similarly misguided (ie, will never go mainstream but will have a healthy niche).

> Anyone remember that Next Big Thing was supposed to be 3D TVs?

No. I remember TV companies pushing it since it was cheap for them to include and they hoped people would think of it as the "Next Big Thing", but consumers and especially reviewers during the aughts saw right through it.

Even in the 90's I remember it being seen as a short-lived novelty more than anything: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1997-05-02-970502...

Regardless what you think of VR I think there are clearly far more bulls than 3D TV ever had.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#709

Post by teknopaul »

My take: fb failed as a social network. Its a data sink you put stuff in but you can't get anything out. You cannot represent real social networks in fb. In real social networks you have different social circles and a different name. Facebook devides the world into friends and public, you yourself have one identity only, and that's not a good model for mapping real social networks into digital ones. During the pandemic when we all really needed social networking fb failed to map your local bars social network onto fb.com.

If they focused on being a social network tool, instead of eating competition so they are _the_ (only) social network, people might increasingly use their products.

But they give nothing back.

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