Facebook bends the rules of audience engagement to its advantage | Hacker News Reader

Facebook bends the rules of audience engagement to its advantage

nytimes.com

114 pointshvo114 comments

> As a company spokeswoman, Jessie Baker, told me: “The time people spend on our site is a good measure of whether we’re delivering value to them.”

Eh, the same argument could be made by Philip Morris or a casino: "The time people spend using our products is a good measure of whether we're delivering value to them."

Or the DMV. "The time people spend at our office is a good measure of whether we're delivering value to them."

Or a hospital.

or a cemetery

Way to get morbid HN... but yeah. Anything that distracts from original purpose is a tar pit for time. I certainly hope I don't go into a cemetery willing and end up staying...

love the way this escalated :)

Exactly. Usage patterns and "deriving value" seem like very different beasts.

Yes; in fact, this statement would have made a lot more sense:

> "The time people spend using our products is a good measure of whether they're delivering value to us."

Now that's a little ominous, but yeah absolutely. It also fits with the "consumer as product" viewpoint.

Isn't the only logical endpoint for Facebook to become a VR world where we all spend 100% of our time? That's what a forever-continuing revenue increase would create, right? And that's exactly how the incentive structures exist right now.

I don't really like that society places such high emphasis on structures that create dystopias.

Interestingly, I think there may be a point beyond which Facebook begins to lose revenue as users spend more time on their site.

Think about it - their revenue comes from turn-over. They don't make money because you spend time on facebook - they make money because you spend time/money elsewhere, and they know enough about you to encourage you to spend more money on other people's products or otherwise sell their knowledge of you to people who can make those sales.

At some point wherein Facebook occupies an exceptional amount of a user's time - when it becomes the only product a user wants - Facebook won't be able to sell you anything. At this point, the company would probably need to find other ways to profit besides advertising. But I don't think we'll ever get anywhere near the point at which an increase in FB use time corresponds to a decrease in advertiser value anyway.

you are neglecting in-app purchases

At some point, time spent on Facebook will start competing against time spent playing candy crush saga.

On the plus side, beyond a certain point Facebook is going to have to start investing heavily in life-extension technology for their users, so as to continue increasing the time that users can use Facebook.

>VR world where we all spend 100% of our time

<sarcasm> Farmville !! I can't wait !! </sarcasm>

You mignt as well just ask...Why not VR Zoidberg?

At a "big data" talk Yahoo gave one of the keynotes where they asked which one of the two email samples had the "most engagement" Surprise surprise it was the one with the confusing text on it -- people were clicking on it to see what the heck it meant.

But to the Yahoo guys that meant that email was better as it got more clicks. And I suppose it is better if that's how your bonus is constructed.

No really. Send slightly jacked-up canned emails. Gravitas!

Well, value in sating a compulsive or addictive behavior, but not all values are equal.

Exactly, I agree. That's why I didn't disagree with the statement, just qualified it with more examples to illustrate your point.

That so many exceptions and alternative interpretations are possible makes "value" a meaningless term. Perhaps some day reporters won't go MEGO[1] when hearing it.

1. https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/mego/

Value is just like a variable, it is a place holder for what matters. And the value of the value can vary depending on the person or the situation. It could be a positive or a negative value, a value of high importance or minimal importance. Assigning something a value just basically means you're not entirely disinterested in it.

Thanks. Well said.

I will never understand why advertising businesses (and that's what Facebook is) fail to see their fundamental value proposition: ROI on ad spend.

Jessie Baker's comment fails in two respects: (1) eyeballs and engagement time is not a "good measure" without correlating to ROI for advertisers, and (2) FB's value proposition is not aimed at users, but rather at advertisers.

ROI-based measurement is the only sane way to measure the effectiveness of a marketing channel.

But if ad companies are measured based on ROI, then they can be easily compared against other channels. That's the last thing any ad company wants.

So to make a great deal of money as a marketing channel you need to invent a new metric, one that your company is very good at delivering on. Then you convince the market that metric is one they should care about.

It's no different from how SaaS companies regularly invent new "spaces" that enterprises need solutions for (marketing automation, lead scoring, video marketing etc) or even how real estate agents in major metro areas regularly rename neighborhoods and redraw area boundaries. If you can make the market, define a new reality that your customers have to step into, you increase the odds that your customers will measure success in a way that favors your strengths.

You're 100% right. I will never understand why ad spend is as high as it is when the customer never proves ROI. It made sense when ads were cultural background noise, in magazines and other media that had no way of providing feedback on conversions, etc. But we've crossed the rubicon, and yet ad channels still suck at ROI for the perverse reasons that you correctly mention.

At least some channels, like App Stores for example, offer something like end-to-end metrics for placements.

I think Philip Morris would not be wrong here. The problem here is the difference in values that individuals have. A lot of us might think of wasting time of Facebook or Casino is a bad idea but for many people it would not be the case. Facebook is essentially competing with Snapchat, Youtube, TV for time and if Facebook wins it means they are offering more value than others. People aren't going to read more books or get new skills if Facebook deliberately rations their user's time.

Yes, there are lots of satisfying addictions competing for our time. That doesn't absolve any of them for the harm they cause.

Anyone selling ads is trying to addict you to get you to see more ads. It's immoral.

I don't find it immoral.

Some people do enjoy smoking and/or gambling. Not everyone is a victim being exploited

And some people are legitimately addicted and unable to stop despite their sincere desire. In many cases, companies engineer products and services to be as addictive as possible. The techniques used by casinos, for instance, are well known.

This is not an argument for regulation, prohibition or anything like that. Merely a rebuttal to the falsehood that nobody is being "exploited" by such companies and that "value" is being created. In many cases value is being destroyed.

At the end of the day society has to decide, are we going to let people make there own decisions or are we going to decide for them? It might very from topic to topic (ex: tobacco vs. unhealthy foods), but it's one definitive answer per topic.

Right, but as I stated above that debate is out of scope. I'm just disputing the notion that fostering addiction amounts to "creating value."

Addiction can be to anything. Its all dopaminergic pathways. Maybe half the idiots arent smoking anymore, instead they are taking selfies. What you are really asking is whether many companies have built themselves into perverse incentive structures with use of dark patterns on their consumers. Absolutely.

I imagine those people with dependency issues that are using social networks to such an extent that it impacts their lives have deeper problems rather than just Facebook. Facebook probably benefits from heavy users, but every industry does (80/20 rule). I could be wrong, but I just don't believe that it can create those users through engineering their products. Although I do admit the service likely attracts those with addictive personalities. Honestly, there are a lot worse things one can be hooked to.

Some people do enjoy heroin and/or being a slave. Not everyone is a victim being exploited.

In other words, I really don't know what you're trying to add to the conversation.

Just because you might find the experience mundane or meaningless and you may not be able to fathom why anyone would willfully use such a product doesn't mean that the users are being exploited. It's very condescending and offensive when you compare casual users of a social network that you may not like to real exploitation through chemical dependence or abuse.

This talk "Is Anything Worth Maximizing?" is worth a watch: http://nxhx.org/maximizing/

That link doesn't work. Can you verify?

Edit: Its working now.

Delivering value could just mean giving them dopamine in the short term. That's value.

"Value" is pretty much the most banal dimension possible. Total red flag euphemism.

You have an excellent nose for appropriate metaphors. That's awesome!

I would be happier if I spent less time on facebook. It is a drug for me.

Kill your Facebook. Seriously. You'll feel so liberated. And showing people pictures of your recent life when you meet them or email them is so fun and you get so much more attention and conversation out of it. Best decision of my life!

I deactivated my Facebook account for over three years, reactivating about 18 months ago. There is an initial feeling of liberation, but I ended up regretting it.

I realize now that I should have just shaped my use to fit my needs: unfriend or unfollow people I don't care to follow, write more messages rather than scrolling through the newsfeed, and join events and groups more deliberately. Deactivating was just an easy way to avoid the headaches rather than going through the work of curating what I wanted to see.

Now I actually use it to keep in touch with people I care about, rather than just pretend that's what I'm doing. I missed out on some things during my three years with Facebook off, and although I learned so much from having done it, I wouldn't do it again.

Everyone has different experiences with this stuff. I deactivated for a while, then went back and 'curated' the hell out of it. After I did that, I realized the only interactions I was getting from it for a while could mostly be had via other websites, in-person, by phone and text, and deactivated a few months back again. Although yesterday, I logged in solely to download a picture my wife wanted I had of her then instantly deactivated again, if that counts.

Since I weaned myself down majorly by curating the content severely for a while, almost no one had been griping to me about 'why aren't you on facebook?' when I stopped using it this last time. And I feel even less compelled to go back on. I enjoy having a sense of privacy, free time to do other things (I have that 50 minutes a day/whatever to do other stuff with now), and I think a better respect for the value of the precious time left in my life. I hope I never get drawn back in to using it.

I didn't have facebook all through college. A few years after I decided to get one and my social life blossomed. Now it's by far the most important piece of technology I use. I keep in touch with people all over the world - some who I met once in some distant country. So easy to hit up someone you haven't talked to in months. It's amazing

Maybe it's because I'm old, but I do all this with email phone calls and text messages and it seems to me to do the job just fine.

What is the advantage of using Facebook to keep in touch with people that I'm missing?

The ability to get a single feed of what they are doing that they can easily send out to everyone without having to create a mailing list.

Being able to easily react to any status that your friends post, and being able to comment on that. The email equivalent would be a separate email thread for each status update from each friend. That would quickly get messy.

And a big one for me is being able to create an event, and invite friends to it. Any updates to said event can then be communicated to all those interested without you having to make updates to a list of email addresses.

Maybe you can handle your social life fine but some of us who are more incompetent at it like the assistance of some automation. I'm only partly joking.

I don't know about that. I'm just honestly confused what Facebook offers for those purposes that "traditional" tools don't.

Those sound like tools for very immediate, personal attention. Facebook allows for that (like messaging or writing on someone else's timeline directly), plus a bunch of intermediate levels. For example I can post 200 photos from my vacation in an album, and it just shows up as a single item in my friends' timelines. Any of my contacts can browse it if they want, but it doesn't take up disk space in their inboxes, they can start a conversation connected to any individual photo, and it's not as insistent as if I'd sent them in an email. And if I really want someone to see it, I can tag them or just message them with the link.

Facebook also serves as an auto-updated contact list. If I update my email or phone number, many of my contacts won't have the new information. FB doesn't have that problem. In fact I can put my phone number and email on my FB profile and my contacts can optionally auto-sync that info right to their phones so it is always up-to-date. It's possible to be "friends" with someone but not "follow" them so you don't see their posts in your normal timeline but you still get their contact info. You can also make closed or open groups which are helpful for event planning and multicast messages, and "friend lists" which let you customize the reach of each post. I guess you could do that last one with email too.

I mean, it sounds okay to be liberated, but what if you just don't spend 50 minutes on it per day? Also, what about the argument of keeping in touch with all your high school friends and distant relatives? What about all the things I would've found out on facebook that I'm now missing out on?

Facebook doesn't just keep you in contact with old friends, it encourages you to stalk their public facing persona. There's none of the mystery and personal discovery that creates the bonds of friendship. It's not real friendship. It's like being a super fan to an amateur musician - a one way street with occasional responses.

The fear of missing out? That's just one of the many addictive strings that Facebook tugs to manipulate you. The things that happen on Facebook don't matter. If something is important then it is far better to discover it outside of Facebook. In the end, nothing is that important.

There are other ways of keeping up with old friends and relatives. Listen to gossip from other friends and family. Keep in contact with them using email, telephone and post. If you don't maintain some link then they should be resigned to the past - until some event occurs to trigger a re-established connection.

> The things that happen on Facebook don't matter.

In my own experience, that's just not true. Facebook has facilitated lots of social interactions for me that simply would not have happened otherwise. Some examples:

- I was doing an internship in Australia for a few months. I posted a picture of the beach on Facebook, an old friend from highschool whom I hadn't talked to in years saw it, commented that I should come visit her in Melbourne. I did, and we met and caught up on life.

- A friend of mine invited me to go to a music festival with her friends. She added me to a group message on Facebook that they were using to plan logistics, etc. After the festival, we continued using the chat to plan other social activities.

- Casual acquaintances that I met once or twice invite me to parties, etc.

Can these things happen without Facebook? Technically, I suppose so. Realistically, I think they would happen less frequently. IMO there's a big difference between Messenger/Events/Groups (facilitates a lot of real interactions) vs News Feed/Profiles (stalking other people).

> There's none of the mystery and personal discovery that creates the bonds of friendship. It's not real friendship.

It's up to us to define what friendship we consider real or not. Personally I find mystery an unpleasant waste of time.

> It's like being a super fan to an amateur musician - a one way street with occasional responses.

Huh? There's no asymmetry if you're both using Facebook.

> If you don't maintain some link then they should be resigned to the past - until some event occurs to trigger a re-established connection.

Screw your "should". Plenty of times I've found out via Facebook that someone was going to an event near me, or just had a common interest, and met up with them as a result. And that's been fun.

> The things that happen on Facebook don't matter

Makes me think Facebook is like Reddit but with people you know.

I only keep in contact with 3 high school friends and generally call them once and awhile. And spend weekends with each other once or twice a year. Relatives send me cards and call on birthdays. See then about the same amount. Don't see a need to be constantly engaged with their lives.

Absolutely. I deactivated mine back in January and I most definitely do not miss it.

I have never had an account. The very idea of it was repugnant to me, even when it was launched. I think it mostly because of the must-use-real-name thing, which was the complete opposite of the way I used the Internet at the time.

But also because I like being un-contactable by people I have known in the past.

Unfortunately, my sister got a lot of "what happened to your brother?" messages, but they have mostly stopped now.

Facebook still creeps me out.

Not reading Facebook posts with any regularity can be a good way to improve your mood and not have to worry about what your life looks like compared to anyone else. But it's unfortunately now the biggest messaging app out there.

I switched to only having Messenger installed on my phone. If I really want to visit the site, I do so through the browser, and I post once or twice a year. I also have an extremely small list of friends on their compared to most people I know. This has let me strike the balance between being able to contact people easily and not feel like Facebook is a daily part of my life.

Why another extreme? I spend 30-60 min on FB just to check events and answer messages, I don't think that's a waste of time, because it's still the fastest/easiest way to maintain relations with many not-very-close people and get information of the local events. I don't post anything and usually don't read other's posts and I don't go by my real name. I think it's strange that every time discussion about Facebook pops-up, people usually assume that FB users waste immense amount of time on it.

I didn't deactivate, but I made my profile link to my personal website and haven't logged in for a couple years.

I spend many hours a day on Facebook and couldn't be happier.

Knowing it's within Facebook's financial interest to self-report this unverifiable number as high as they can, I wonder what's included.

Are they only including when a user has the mobile app or browser window open and is engaging with the content or are they measuring the total time the page is open regardless of whether it's being interacted with or not? [1]

Are they only including engaging directly on facebook.com or would looking at say, powered-by-facebook comments on a third party site add to this tally?

If that's game, what other things are open to this interpretation?

I'm not saying these metrics are fraudulent, just underspecified.

---

1. Under the more permissive metrics, I could be considered "on" stackoverflow, github, or wikipedia perhaps 4 hours a day - because I, like most, don't judiciously close every browser window immediately after I'm done. Although I certainly visit these sites a lot, tallying the numbers like this is probably disingenuous.

Tons of services have "log in with Facebook" features. Last I checked, Tinder required a Facebook account. I wonder if those logins are included?

While people are spending more and more time on FB, I find it that there is less and less original content uploaded. It's all likes and re-shares.

Facebook is actively trying to deal with that truth: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-07/facebook-s...

It's reverberation chamber.

It's a 'go to' reflex, like TV.

This should be a wake up call. This site really doesn't deliver anything of value. It doesn't really make you more social and it doesn't really connect you to people in the real world. So basically you spend 16,800 minutes a year on Facebook. That is 11 days of your life lost a year.

I get value from Facebook just like I get value from Hacker News, Reddit, Messenger, etc.

It literally helps me connect to people in the real world - I just discovered Tycho's new album through there, planned a trip to a festival with friends there, just filled up my weekend, and discovered a new area I'm going to go rock climbing.

If you are getting no value from Facebook, you're probably not using it correctly - which you can change.

You should be proud of that. It's exactly what FB wants you to do.

What kind of argument is this? Of course it is what FB wants, but this doesn't automatically make something bad.

Having protected sex is exactly what Trojan and Durex want you to do...

Oh it surely delivers value for the creator:) many are very happy to get data mined and manipulated and dont see how it could be a problem at all.

I spend 50 minutes a day on Hacker News.

Hacker News is for me a news and discussion portal. Reddit is something that might show up from a Google search. I block most of the distracting internet during the day - except FB and HN - so of course those two get the majority of my allocated distracted time. I should measure it, but I'd not be at all surprised if they each got an hour a day.

let's not talk about reddit then

Why is this remotely bad?

> “They’re doing a tremendous job of finding ways to keep people on the site”

Could also be phrased

"Facebook provides such great value to its unpaying customers that they are willing to spend 50 minutes per day interacting with their services"

... a spin/PR/sales person could word it better I'm sure

Please don't feed the turd-polishers.

I suggest you to read Momo by Michael Ende[1], it is basically about this topic. Obviously, not only Facebook is guilty.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_(novel)

I don't think we should expect Facebook to change. We need better tools that allow people to stay away from it (and other such distractions in future). We need tools that help people understand how to manage their internet time better. They need to understand what kind of emotional costs (which will vary a lot) are associated with extended FB usage. And such tools will ideally be browser addons.

Imagine a browser that I can configure based on my weekly goals. There are domains I want to avoid. There are domains where I most want to be (for that week). And some neutral domains like search engines. Maybe assign weights to these. Then over the week, browser reminds or guides us towards most productive behaviors. If our behavior is inconsistent with our initial goals, it assigns heavier penalties (like block domain for a week) for those negative domains.

There are many interesting implications once someone starts thinking about some of these options. But at this point, I don't see exciting innovation on this.

Though I do find your intent admirable, I think that it's misplaced - the reason there's no innovation on this front is because these sorts of time management tools are entirely dependent on the self-control of the persons they are targeted for, self-control issues being the reason they're glued to Facebook in the first place.

While such a time management tool may benefit a small few, the majority of people at a computer just don't seem to care too much - heck, even today many users need to be compelled to install an adblocker and to keep their software up to date -- imagine trying to convince that user base to also restrict their ability to go places online voluntarily.

Change has to come from within as an actual want - you have to want to be running every day to lose weight, you have to want to practice every day to learn an instrument or a language, and the type of change you're discussing has to come from an internal want to actually disassociate from Facebook and its ilk. Right now it's not so much that people don't want Facebook so much as they're not sure what else to do - the centralization of the web into a few major hub websites has left a lot of people completely lost as to what being online can actually do for you. You can see this effect all over the place - just watch how many people will upvote a "betterment" thread on reddit or imgur filled with free learning links, but never actually take the time to follow through on these threads. The few that do are the exception, not the rule.

As great as it would be if we all learned a bit more self control, mindlessly browsing Facebook is the new "TV on in the background" and has been for awhile.

RescueTime does exactly this.

First of all, separate app isn't the same. Secondly, it just gives reports. That's a passive action. The "guide towards more productive behavior" part of my comment meant that actively tries to stop you from negative domains or push you towards better domains.

I still don't see ANY value in using facebook besides giving to the market my personal data. I just don't understand why this is so popular.

If I wanted to use a social network, I would use one where I can contact new people of interest, not the one I can talk with when I open my window but I won't because I use facebook.

The value for many people is:

- Being able to easily communicate with a large group of your friends at the same time

- Being able to contact old acquaintances who you otherwise wouldn't have been able to find

- Being able to finely control they way you present yourself to your peers

- Being able to easily coordinate events

...to name a few.

There are other ways to accomplish the same tasks, but Facebook is coherent and easy to use.

I personally don't use Facebook either, but I do see the value in it.

Only your second point is valid to me and not worth the use of the system by itself. This is not worth the encapsulation around your acquaintances you are supposed to cultivate the relation face to face, not through a "wall" and mediocre public interactions.

There is a lot of means to communicate and coordinate things efficiently (it was already possible before facebook) and the "fine control" over your "present yourself" is either an illusion or proof of your superficiality. I think it is the point around what facebook was built: the superficiality of people and their need to show off everywhere and think of themselves as some public figure. I guess that's also why instagram and selfies are so popular. It's all about network connection, not about the meaningful content the network is supposed to carry.

I wonder how much of an overlap there is with "waiting in line." because that's a big use case for me.

Last year, I was spending roughly ~25 minutes / day on Facebook (according to Rescuetime). I've never had the app, or messenger on my phone. So on Chrome, I added News Feed Eradicator (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat...) and my usage dropped down to about 5 minutes / day (still more than necessary).

Unlike a lot of people here (it seems), I get a lot of real usage out of Facebook though. For example, it's the number one source of events for my favorite hobby / workout. I wouldn't really be connected to the community and know what events are going on if I didn't have it.

A slightly less drastic / more tweakable extension: http://www.fbpurity.com/

I use it to delete game + app stories from the newsfeed; I will sheepishly admit I haven't disabled 'Deleted Friend Alerts' either.

Criticisms of FB notwithstanding (and it's interesting how that dominates this discussion), time-on-site is a horrible measure of "value added" to me.

I've found highly-directed, highly-filtered, low-noise, low-distraction envrionments are what give me return.

Interfaces and services like ... Books. A notebook. Index cards for noting thoughts and ideas. Tangibles which I can hold, flip through, sort, take outside, read in sunlight, and don't offer me the option of clicking over to see my feed or who's responded to me.

(And no, I don't have a FB account either, never have.)

All i think of when I see the word facebook is who would use that data mining, censoring, manipulative product. To each their own but I think many dont see whats going on with it.

> many dont see whats going on with it

I think we need some realistic examples of what could go wrong. To many, online privacy issues are a bit too hypothetical and abstract.

Indeed; a common response I encounter if I complain about Facebook is along the lines of "I don't see why it matters that FB knows stuff about me, and I think I get more value from them than they possibly could get from me for the trivial information they learn about me."

A prime example is on the front page of hacker news right now IMO.

http://www.cnet.com/news/facebooks-newest-privacy-problem-fa...

It seems like in general massively scaled technology companies don't get much love on HN. Seems odd to me as so much of what is discussed on HN is how to massively scale your own technology company.

Is it that they become othered once they pass a certain size, or go public?

What gives?

I mean, I get it that people don't like the influence of VC and finance, but that's part of the game with scaled companies.

"Facebook Has 50 Minutes of Your Time Each Day"

FaceBook has none of my time ever. (Unless we're talking about their contributions to OSS.)

Considering the widespread use of their open source projects like react, I'd say we have 50 minutes of THEIR time each day

Certainly 50 minutes of mine! More than half of my days go to open-source React.

Sadly this estimate seems on point. I think the jump in time spent is largely because of Instagram though - there are many who check both daily

That includes Messenger. Is Messenger just IM? If so, that estimate makes more sense. Do they serve ads there too?

I was never an active FB user, and it has been years since I deleted my account. On the other hand my wife is using it every now and then and I can see the entertainment value in it.

I know everybody loves to hate it, but I don't see it as being inherently worse than TV, or Reddit...

People who love to hate Facebook love to hate TV and Reddit equally.

Facebook gets about 10 minutes of my time each day, thanks to heavily muting many friends' posts, FB Purity, and uBlock.

Meanwhile, Tesla has 120 minutes of my time each day. I'm fine with that.

I am not someone who uses facebook, if you would not mind could you explain briefly what you mean by "muting friends posts"?

You can "unfollow" people that you have added, so that their posts no longer show up on your news feed. You still have them added as a friend, you just don't see their posts without visiting their profile page.

People spend 5 hours on average watching tv, so Facebook has a long way to go! Seriously, is this really something to be proud of?

If they really want to dominate then it would be prudent for them to buy reddit and imgur.

is it really user engagement or the time you spend scrolling through your feed to find something worth checking out, that dwarfs the time spent on twitter?

the time spent looking through your FB feed to find something worth checking out largely contributes to it's dominance over time spent on twitter...

Yeah not gonna happen. Literally the only thing I use it for is chat.

How is this news?

Apparently Facebook is so good at user engagement, they can get people to spend time talking about how much time is spent on the platform ;)

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