Hacker News Reader

Comment by victorvation | Hacker News Reader

> More precisely, it feels the way Facebook did from 2009 to 2012, when it silently crossed over from one of those tech things that some people sometimes did to one of those tech things that everyone you know does every day.

Ubiquity is an interesting thought - there are very few apps that an average person uses on a daily basis that _aren't_ owned by Facebook. Four of the most used apps (Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp) are owned by the same parent company.

In China, we see an analogous example - to an even greater extent - WeChat is practically the de facto mobile OS. Where do we go from here? Hardware? WeChat seems most likely to do this, from my perspective. What happens when Tencent acquires Xiaomi and creates WeChatOS phones? What happens when Facebook does similar and Mark Zuckerberg controls nearly every waking moment of most Americans? Who is the Apple to the United States v. Facebook monopoly?

View on HN

Judging by my kids and their friends, teens and younger are not using Facebook apps, they are using Snapchat.

Yep. What were App Annie's numbers? 35% of SC's daily average users in the U.S. don't use or can't be found on Facebook on any given day. 46% can't be reached on IG and 58% on Messenger. Snapchat is killing in the moment engaged posts. However, Snapchat, like Facebook, is fundamentally an ad tech platform too. SC will probably get worse along the way. Discover is click bait news and Stories have sneaky ads that everyone just skips. Maybe if Signal integrated a Bitmoji-like and filter experience, it would potentially become the best social experience.

Recently they're using snapchat? Check again. Instagram rolled out snapchat-comparable features in the last couple months. Im 23, but most of my friends have moved to instagram for stories.

Which is why Facebook bought Instagram.

Keep in mind that inside of AOL, we thought of GNN as "AOL2000". Yeah, that worked out real good. ;)

I know a ton of Users who are not on Facebook. Yeah Facebook had a ton of users, I'm not sure how many of them are real and how engaged Facebook keeps them.

So many ads you can slap in someone's face before they get put off.

Lots and lots of fake accounts, especially to play certain games, or set up as bots for other purpose.

When I was active on Facebook, most people I knew had dozens of fake accounts.

I hope you're not suggesting snapchat is some kind of healthy alternative ? ;)

> What happens when Facebook does similar and Mark Zuckerberg controls nearly every waking moment of most Americans? Who is the Apple to the United States v. Facebook monopoly?

That's called jumping the shark. In this context, the point in time where people get so concerned about a powerful company, that a form of outlandish and irrational fear starts to set in. See: IBM 1970s, early 1980s; Microsoft late 1990s; Google today; Amazon soon; Facebook tomorrow. In most historical instances of monopoly or near monopoly, by the time the fear got really extreme, the company's power was already near a peak or in decline.

I wish I could call it a mere exaggeration, the notion of Zuckerberg 'controlling nearly every waking moment for Americans' - but it's far beyond that.

That's not called jumping the shark. Jumping the shark is when something formerly cool/great (originally, Fonzie in TV sitcom Happy Days) does something so blatantly stupid (originally, jumping over a shark on water skis) that it becomes painfully obvious that they've lost all credibility.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark

A fun read by the writer of that Happy Days episode:

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/03/entertainment/la-et-...

I also heard an interview somewhere/sometime where he indicated the same thing: Although popular in our lexicon, the show actually did not go into a death spiral after that episode. It was hugely successful. Nevertheless, the term remains.

Correct. OP probably meant jumping to conclusions (perhaps on a welcome mat)

Nice Office Space reference! :-D

Reply on news.ycombinator.com