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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

#921

Post by iszomer »

olivermarks wrote: post #870
jmacd wrote: post #774

There is something else going on around FB. Almost all activity online has shifted away from the Social Graph to a Content Graph. Almost nobody wants to see what their friends are doing online anymore. In a lot of ways it can be cringey. People just want the latest, catchiest content. TikTok and Youtube are the OGs here, but it's everywhere when you start to look. Twitter timeline changes being an awkward but working…

Bizarre how Tiktok went from being a Chinese sovereign state/public enemy that was going to be 'bought' by Oracle/Walmart but is now starting to destroy the 2nd gen social networks, the original concern. I've assumed for a while FB was being sunset'd/Yahoo'd to prep for a next gen surveillance capitalism engine but the TT Chinese data mining allowance continues to surprise. Meanwhile the 'off' platforms - Rumble etc…

I wouldn't mind if the CCP wants to own all the garbage content on tiktok as a tactic against us, as long as people are aware of the nonsense hosted on there.

Thanks, @libsoftiktok.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#922

Post by zjaffee »

gman83 wrote: post #535
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…

The acquisition strategy could have worked going forwards, seeing as there's not much anti-trust will in the U.S. against M&A, but the problem is that they missed the chance to buy musical.ly (bought for $1 billion by ByteDance in 2017) which became TikTok. If they had made this acquisition they would be in a very different position. Looking at my teenage kids and their friends, they barely use Instagram (let alone F…

I don't think they're competing against each other. TikTok is competing against youtube, which are both competing against traditional network television such as nick or disney. Fb and Instagram's lack of growth has little to do with the success of the other, they just missed their opportunity to move in the more curated video space.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#923

Post by cwkoss »

ProAm wrote: post #23
cwkoss wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like "selling acres on the Moon" and "smart" are at significant odds with each other...

If someone asks you for $25.00 for an acre on the moon, you'd probably pay it just in case its a future lottery ticket.

I'll sell you up to 50,000,000 acres on Mars for 1/5,000,000th of a bitcoin each, lmk if you want me to send a btc address. Proof of ownership will be provided as a convenient and portable .txt file

If you but the whole amount, I'll write into my will that my decendant's also have to honor your claim. If any of them becomes king or queen of mars, could be quite lucrative!

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#924

Post by [deleted] »

wombat-man wrote: post #769
Falkon1313 wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Adding Messenger, groups, and events were good moves, but they ruined the feed so badly it soured the whole thing. Should've stuck to being social networking instead of trying to be whatever the feed is supposed to be now. They could've easily expanded into more social features, longer-form stuff like Livejournal, personal creative stuff like Deviantart, and personal creative/selling like Etsy and Bandcamp a…

I'm pretty much in it for the baby pictures and vacation photos at this point, but those are starting to thin out as my friends and loose connections are moving on from the platform.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#925

Post by kevstev »

pantalaimon wrote: post #901
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…

What baffles me is how they pretty much destroyed the social network aspect of it. 10 years ago Facebook was the place to know what’s going on in your social circle. You’d find out about events or share experiences, setting relationship status was something of significance. Then the feed became more and more laden with sponsored posts or posts by meme pages. Sharing something personal in this kind of environment sudd…

I feel the exact same way. After my last vacation, I actually felt a little awkward posting pictures of it after- for many years FB had served as a great online photo album, but this was around the election, and it was all hatebook type stuff and posts from news outlets and such, it felt out of place to post pictures from my life on there. It was a very strange feeling, and I think a big harbinger of where they have gone wrong as a company. As less people post about whats going on in their lives, I find less value on the site, and the cycle seems self perpetuating at this point. I am not sure how they turn this around... and I say this as someone who was once something of a fanboy and has held their stock since the IPO.

If I was in Zuck's shoes, I would kill all political content on the site... immediately and banish it to never come back. Really all outside content needs to go, I don't want news of any sort from FB aside from the "original content" my friends produce. And if you want, inject a reasonable number of ads in between, and I can deal with that, but their "product" in my eyes is their social feed, and that is a fraction of the size it once was.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#926

Post by basisword »

jhickok wrote: post #903
beart wrote: post #895

My children's school communicates a lot of information through their Facebook page. I had to reactivate my dead account after years when my kid started kindergarten. There was particularly important information that they did not send out anywhere but on Facebook. Meanwhile, they have a "news" page on their actual school website that has not been updated in years. I hate it and I think it should be illegal to force th…

Same. My kids are in sports and Facebook is how they communicate with us, including changes to schedules, "snack duty", pictures and videos from games, etc. It's basically impossible to be a judicious parent and not be on Facebook for me.

I ask this seriously because I’m curious: have either you or the parent comment talked the school/clubs about communicating via other means? Or indicated Facebook isn’t possible for you?

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#927

Post by tamaharbor »

ubermonkey wrote: post #794
BaldricksGhost wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Facebook is where you find out your highschool friend is super in to a MLM, your uncle has drastic political views you don't share, and that your historical social class and network is largely irrelevant to your life a decade later." This is probably the most accurate description of Facebook I've seen.

I'm reminded of a Twitter joke from (according to the WaPo) @KevinFarzad: "HEY IT'S ME your facebook friend from high school who never left our hometown & thinks Olive Garden is fancy. Anyway, here's a racist article."

What’s the matter with Olive Garden?

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#928

Post by jhickok »

basisword wrote: post #926
jhickok wrote: post #903

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. My kids are in sports and Facebook is how they communicate with us, including changes to schedules, "snack duty", pictures and videos from games, etc. It's basically impossible to be a judicious parent and not be on Facebook for me.

I ask this seriously because I’m curious: have either you or the parent comment talked the school/clubs about communicating via other means? Or indicated Facebook isn’t possible for you?

I have not. There's really no sense in which Facebook isnt possible for me. I could say that I have privacy concerns but I'm genuinely not interested in being a weirdo parent that puts pressure on my kids. Most of the organizers are just trying to find a platform that is "gated" (by invite only) and everyone uses. Hard to beat FB for that in 2022.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#929

Post by ubermonkey »

bko wrote: post #880
ubermonkey wrote: post #797

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are a lot of people who are in my position, which is "I would absolutely love to ditch FB entirely, but I can't because of ____". The value of ____ might be "seeing pictures of family", or it might be "coordination of/participation in a group that has settled on Facebook as the easiest path" ( But none of these are positive reasons. There is no love of Facebook behind any of them. It's Facebook being to…

Seeing pictures of family and participating in group events are all positive in my opinion. My son's daycare has a facebook page. It's very convenient to stay up to date on my own schedule without having to deal with emails. My pizzeria also has a facebook page. It's an easy way to look up hours or any updates. My gym has an instagram page to post their workouts and schedule. It's very convenient. The owners aren't v…

The information you get from businesses USED to be available on their own sites, without requiring you to submit to Facebook's invasive tracking.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#930

Post by r00fus »

tamaharbor wrote: post #927
ubermonkey wrote: post #794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reminded of a Twitter joke from (according to the WaPo) @KevinFarzad: "HEY IT'S ME your facebook friend from high school who never left our hometown & thinks Olive Garden is fancy. Anyway, here's a racist article."

What’s the matter with Olive Garden?

Joke is thinking OG is somehow fancy digs.
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