Hacker News Reader

Comment by jbverschoor | Hacker News Reader

More time required = more bouncing users. I even skip a 5 sponsored ad on youtube. I have no patience for this stuff. The first thing I do is scroll to the comments to see the list of thing the video says (for example top 5 things to eat, or whatever), as I have no patience for these videos being longer just so they get ranked higher, because that's the metric youtube is currently using.

I read HN headlines + top comments, because I have no patience to read a 20 page article that is badly written, or is written in such a way to get more pageviews.

You want engagement? Give me high quality content. Short, long, doesn't matter. High quality, dense content.

The internet is full of fluff. It's like everybody is using this xantham gum these days.

View on HN

You are a minority and/or your behavior is only possible because there are alternative/better sources for the content you’re looking for, allowing you to skip the bullshit and get the same/similar content on a different source (like HN) with a better experience.

Most of the content on FB is either exclusive to it (all your friends are on there) or the majority of their target market doesn’t know/care about finding other sources which provide that content with a better experience.

I am a minority. I uused a chrome extension before to filter out posts that were liked by many people. Also, I forced it to be chronological. I was very happy, until it didn't work anymore.

Most posts these days are tiktok reposts anyway. The only things I like about fb these days:

- Some groups I'm in

- I like the marketplace

- For people to find me

Facebook rolls out UI changes in less valuable markets to gather data to verify their changes don't decrease engagement.

Oh wow this is interesting / something to remember for my own life. So basically, they might try something out first in [small country] and if it works go to [medium country] and then if it stills works roll out to everyone?

This has been how companies have worked since forever.

In the 19th- and mid-20th centuries, all of the big advertising agencies handling consumer goods were headquartered in Chicago (many still are).

They would test products by introducing them a couple of hundred miles away in Peoria, Illinois. If the items were well accepted there, then they were rolled out to the rest of the country. It's where the expression, "But will it play in Peoria?" comes from.

This still happens. Back when Starbucks was still cool, it would roll out new drinks in Chicago and a couple of other cities as test markets, and then later in the rest of the nation if they were successful.

This makes complete sense - I just had never thought about it - Obviously, had thought about testing things in a smaller market, but for some reason my brain hadn't mapped that to software / websites / etc.

And props for history less on "But will it play in Peoria?"

New Zealand gets almost everything first. It's the ideal test market for FB to trial new features that mimic's it's primary revenue generating users in the USA and EMEA.

Yes, Google will iterate on the search results / new search result features in smaller markets also.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com