Hacker News Reader

Can confirm. I used to work for a large media companies, and the consensus in our area is that Facebook used to be a primary channel in the past, but now it's a secondary engagement channel (behind Instagram and Twitter), and a secondary organic source (much less people is using it to find businesses). It's going down in all metrics.

The only businesses still relying on Facebook are event-based: concerts, parties, exhibitions, etc. Because they use FB Events. But even Instagram is taking over in that area.

Other than that, Facebook business pages are just becoming a place for marketing to dump stuff.

You know FB owns Instagram though right? Why do they care if you spend money there or on FB proper?

> You know FB owns Instagram though right? Why do they care if you spend money there or on FB proper?

Because the audiences are different?

I don't follow.

The audiences for Starbucks Latte and Cappuccino are different. Starbucks is indifferent whether you buy one or the other though.

A better analogy would be Pizza Hut or Taco Bell ... They absolutely market both and some share space, that doesn't mean they each respectively don't care where the spend goes. If people are buying from Taco Bell, the Pizza Hut a block away may or may not shut down, and spending efforts will reflect those differences.

Ok that highlights the misunderstanding.

My analogy would be that Yum Brands doesn't care whether you visit Taco Bell or Pizza Hut. In the same way Facebook (inc) doesn't care whether you visit Facebook or Instagram.

Possibly, I'm unsure of their executive structure or internal culture, it could go either way.

But, the marketers hired specifically for Facebook do care if you're going to Instagram more since it endangers[1] their product... Facebook Inc cares because one of it's branches is less worth in investing in but is happy the money you're spending is still within their product universe.

I think that you're being a bit over simplistic, there is a lot of decision making based around company component performance, poor sales number within the Facebook native platform may influence more money being redirected to support Instagram which might end up as a personnel cut in an extreme circumstance.

1. Reeeeeally loosely defined, since AFAICT Facebook isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

> 1. Reeeeeally loosely defined, since AFAICT Facebook isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

I have an interesting approach. Maybe it falls flat on its face, but maybe it could work.

Create a "liberally themed" Facebook clone and onboard a bunch of people during the run up to the election. Give them tooling under the guise of campaigning, but also get them to use Facebook like features.

Ban any conservative thought or commentary. It's harsh, it's undemocratic, but it plays into the attack. Especially if you can drum up press coverage on Fox News.

Hypothetically, a polarized platform could create a stir. Maybe liberals on Facebook get interested. Maybe it leads to a small migration. This furthers the right-leaning polarizarion of Facebook's userbase, causing more liberals to flee. Thermal runaway.

This "Facebook is for Republicans" narrative is aided by the recent rumors that Zuckerburg has been meeting with Republican leaders about campaign advertising.

If you completely brain drain Facebook of the liberal demographic and make it skew far right, are the engineers, predominantly liberals, going to continue to be excited coming to work to build that product?

I think it's an interesting approach. It's far-fetched and kind of sneaky, but I'd love to see something like this attempted.

It would prove a new vector of attack for entering the social space. Something that even Instagram might be vulnerable to.

Do it.. and good luck to you with that.

Folks... This is the most confusing thread I ever participated.

In my post I just mentioned which beverage my customers prefer, I never implied that Starbucks is closing or should close...

Welcome to HN. :)

Folks are confusing Facebook (the product) with Facebook (the company).

Facebook (the product) is an absolute dumpster fire that is primarily used to spread propaganda that Facebook (the company) is unable and unwilling to stop.

Facebook (the company) is doing just fine, because they quickly realized social media sites are basically dating sites, where each new age cohort attaches to a different one. That means Facebook (the product) can indeed be awful and not affect the company much since all the users just moved to Instagram.

I don't think FB cares, but if you are the one spending your own money, you probably care an awful lot.

Yes, but the point op seemed to be making was that FB inc was in trouble because now instagram is the #1 choice instead of Facebook. This makes no sense - it all goes to the same bank account

> the point op seemed to be making

Wait, are you talking about me?

In my post I don't even hint at anything even close to that, I don't have any bias against Facebook, the company or the website. I'm not even talking about the future of Facebook AT ALL in the post. I'm just stating some metrics we gathered at my last workplace that might be helpful for people using social media.

Are you sure you're not projecting, or being over-defensive?

Youre right, but for an advertiser it's important to know where to spend the money. From their perspective FB and Insta are not of equal value.

The ones that do (buy FB ads), typically do so through local "media company" who tack on their own fees, which in turn makes it a poor investment. I can count on one hand (out of hundreds) the number of our clients who effectively use Facebook.

That seems less an indictment of the performance Facebook ads, and more of an indictment of local Facebook ads consultants. As an experienced marketer, I can tell you that in most niches, ROAS from Facebook ads done correctly vastly outperforms that of AdWords ads. AdWords tends to deliver higher quality traffic, but at a CPC that is so much higher than Facebook that it makes Facebook’s lower quality traffic the better buy.

A quick Google search shows that your anecdote, doesn't match the broader statistics...

https://www.investopedia.com/news/facebook-google-digital-ad...

Between Facebook and Google. Facebook has about 34% of the ad spend (36.2 + 19.2)/19.3.

I believe that's for Facebook Inc. and includes Instagram.

> Anecdotally, based on my experience working with over 250 local businesses across the business spectrum, this doesn't reflect reality.

Have to chime in here. I run a small brick and motor business with a membership model (climbing gym).

FB/Insta are paramount to our marketing and communication. Like the parent comment said, people like to say they don't use Facebook/Insta but that doesn't seem to be true at all.

Our ad budget on FB is an easy choice and is the only method of adverts that have given us any sort of consistent return. Groupon can get people in the door as well, but then you need to convert them directly with strong sales. It's good, but hard.

Organic FB/Insta are also the best way for us to communicate with our members/community about events, specials and closures. People check these platforms all the time. I believe these work so well for us because of the visual aspect of our business. If we were more informational, perhaps email would be a better tool.

I fantasize about not using Facebook properties, but it would come at a tremendous cost to the business and our community.

It completely depends on the target demographic. For escape rooms, for example (mentioned in the above post), everyone is going to look up reviews on Facebook before buying tickets.

Not so sure that's true - most of the people I know look on Google/Maps for reviews now rather than trusting FB (or Yelp). It's probably demographic and market dependent.

I dunno, FB business pages seem to be really flaky. I'm just myself but I'd do a cursory check of google reviews and call it at that.

Facebook has reviews? That's news to me.