>FB as a website / app is dead
According to whom? Hacker news doomsday predictors? They have literally over a billion MAUs right? Just because the demographic skews older doesn't make those users less valid.
According to whom? Hacker news doomsday predictors? They have literally over a billion MAUs right? Just because the demographic skews older doesn't make those users less valid.
I wonder how accurate that number is though. FB is not really known for providing accurate statistics [0].
To clarify, I don't think they are dead and are humungous irrespective of how accurate the numbers are. But considering the history of the company, I don't think any of their metrics/statements can be trusted.
0 - https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/17/17989712/facebook-inaccu...
1. Craigslist (via Marketplace) 2. meetup.com (via Groups) 3. NextDoor (also via Groups - this is probably a local thing because in Baltimore there is a perception that NextDoor and its userbase are racist) 3. The Yellow Pages (via Pages for Local Businesses)
Maybe it's dead as a social platform for cool young people, but ... if we're thinking of doing work on our house, my wife asks for contractor recommendations on the Facebook groups for our neighborhood and HOA. I bought a bike on Marketplace, I'm constantly driving around to get free / cheap kid stuff my wife found on Marketplace.
My wife and I were never "Facebook people" (we met on Reddit), but now we use it a lot just because it seems like Facebook completely owns the social-local space, for young-/middle-aged adults, especially those with kids.
However, I lived in the HN bubble for a few years and came to conclusion that FB is dead. Over a few months last year I realized how active FB is and was shocked to learn that lot of people use FB to form new relationships, sell things and discover new stuff.
I don’t plan to activate my FB account but the view that FB is dead is utter nonsense
Not only have they never seemed in danger for a moment from the outside looking in, but all of the issues and controversy around facebook a decade ago that caused me to quit have been replaced by entirely different concerns every few years, increasingly based on political winds. The content of anti-facebook sentiment has been ephemeral, and the backlash always disorganized.
And above all, nothing has stopped people from at least logging in once a day, checking their messages, checking their groups, organizing events and responding to event invitations, and angrily responding to right/left wing comments from friends-of-friends. People continue to do thie like a chore, even if they get their all day dopamine hits from somewhere else like reddit/twitter, facebook's own instagram, or even the google news feed. Meanwhile, the suburban white-wingers who get their dopamine hits from facebook spend all day generating the content that pisses off the "barely use facebook anymore" people, extending their single or twice-daily visit, and also providing the cultural strife that they're reacting to on reddit/twitter/instagram/google news.
There are browser plugins to filter out groups, pages and ads from your feed. That removed, it's basically a ghost town, at least for everyone I know that tried. It's become a glorified web portal/forum from the dot com boom at this point, and not a particularly good one at that. Within 5 years FB (the website, not the company) as it is will disappear or become irrelevant.
As an aside, I’m a little uneasy with this statement. We always get reminders of the disconnect between the stock market and reality.
Observing younger people in my family I think there has been a shift in recent years. When I was growing up being able to connect with friends outside of school, etc was a real privilege and something we had not had before services like MSN and MySpace.
These days kids are connected primary via online interactions from what I've seen. The young guys in my family spend hours chatting to friends on XBox while the girls play games like Roblox together and message on apps like TikTok / Snap. They don't need a Facebook because they're already connected through their other online activities. In fact when I've asked them about Facebook they don't even get why it's a thing and have told me flat out that it's a site for old people.
Even among people my age there is no long the desire to share things publicly and instead to connect via private messaging services which as OP suggested isn't going to be as easily monetisable.