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Comment by deeptote | Hacker News Reader

I don't know anyone under 50 who actively uses Facebook.

That's in your local bubble. In some countries Facebook is no. 1 and on same level or even more important as Google Maps for businesses. Wished it was not the case though.

Taiwanese even use it as some sort of blogging platform.

> That's in your local bubble. In some countries Facebook is no. 1 and on same level or even more important as Google Maps for businesses. Wished it was not the case though.

Facebook is an American company, if it fails in that market, it will most likely eventually fail globally as well. Orkut being super popular in India and Brazil didn't save it.

These kinds of changes always start in some sort of localized group or community. While it's wise to not assume that every small movement is going to turn into a large one, it's still worth paying attention to what's going on at the fringes so that you don't get caught with your pants down.

As another anecdote, Facebook has died out amongst my peer group, it used to be heavily used for event planning amongst friends but now it's been abandoned despite no good replacements in the wings because nobody is on Facebook to see your events. Instead we are back to using text messages and emails.

They did it to themselves. The minute your feed/notifications went so ad-filled and algorithm-driven that you couldn't find events and announcements before they happened... Facebook killed the golden goose.

And those countries have a much lower ARPU. Facebook staying dominant in those countries is at best a Pyrrhic victory.

Why do people always bring this up when people talk about "Facebook"? Whenever I see people use "Facebook" used to describe the company, I think of all the products they offer, not just facebook.com.

With that being said, anecdotally, in younger (American) circles, facebook.com isn't used much as a social media/content sharing platform. However, other facebook (meta) products like messenger, and instagram are still used a ton, not to mention facebook.com "subproducts" like marketplace, or using facebook pages to act as a landing page for a business. Just because younger people don't use facebook.com doesn't mean they have little relevance within that subgroup.

This isn't even including the huge influence of whatsapp, granted it still(?) doesn't generate any revenue. Facebook developer products like react or pytorch also have a very strong foothold among young developers.

> Why do people always bring this up when people talk about "Facebook"?

Wasn't one of the points of their recent rebrand to Meta to better define "Facebook" as a singular product, and not the company and its other products?

Correct, but in this particular context, the top level comment used "Facebook" to refer to the collection of products under the "Facebook" (meta) umbrella. So saying "No young people use Facebook" implies that no one uses instagram, whatsapp, etc. in this context :P

I see this a lot in other threads pertaining to Meta/FB but its all semantics at the end of the day. And even if they are referring to "Facebook" the singular product being irrelevant, its not really informative since at the end of the day Facebook is a B2B company that sells data and serves targeted ads. It doesn't matter if they get that information to you through oculus, facebook.com, instagram, or whatsapp, and as of now, their "core" products (fb.com, instagram, whatsapp, messenger, oculus) still cover a huge market of people they can glean data from.

Almost everyone I know under 50 uses WhatsApp and/or Instagram multiple times per day.

I'm 40 and never been on either of those. Facebook came out when I was in college. If I didn't have it I don't have a good alternative to keeping track of all the friends I made at that time. I'm sure I'm not alone with that.

WhatsApp is not making any money though, they bought it just because it competed with Messenger on B2C.

Almost everyone I know under 50 doesn't use WhatsApp and/or Instagram multiple times per day.

I wonder what insights we can extrapolate to billions of people from our sample size of 2.

Their anecdote is worth a lot more. Most people under 50 that any one knows don’t use almost every thing. It likely isn’t true that no one is using it around you. I’ve had a friend say that before when I know mutual friends who use it. There’s too many different things so most things won’t be used among any ones anecdotes. For something to be used in different anecdotes is a pretty big deal.

Are you using FB and IG and have tried friends most people you know and actively check if people are around those platforms or how else would you know? I find it hard to believe much of any one who is active on the internet does not know any one who does not use FB or IG. There are a lot more people on IG than most people realize because of it being harder to find people. For a community I run, no one knew half of the other members on IG until I listed everyone out to members.

All anecdotes are pointless.

You can't extrapolate your opinion to the behaviours of a billion plus people.

If a random person has all their friends using any of my web apps, that’s huge. In most cases anecdotes are not worth much. Not in all cases. Not all anecdotes are specifically about billion plus people. Anecdotes were never needed for this convo any way. We have Meta’s data on the usage of their apps and their revenue.

I’m 35 and it’s the only place to find and hang out with my friends. I also post pictures of my kids so grandparents will ooh and ahh. My wife gets hundreds of likes on her posts.

Also the ads I get are generally shockingly relevant to me. I buy stuff from Facebook ads sometimes.

Yet somehow

1) Meta has a lot of active users across all of their properties (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp). Even the core Facebook product generates a lot of activity, which can be seen from their financials.

2) The great majority of Facebook users are under 50 (Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/187549/facebook-distribu... )

HN commenters (and their friends) don't overlap with Facebook's userbase as much as the general population. It doesn't make sense to try to extrapolate from individual anecdotes when vast quantities of research and data are available on the topic. It's reminiscent of people who refuse to acknowledge climate change because it's not hot where they live. Ignore your bubble, focus on the plentiful data available.

Not necessarily a bad thing. The world is aging and old people have all the money

Absolutely a bad thing. Young folks have less money, but are more impulsive with spending. The 18-44 crowd is an extremely coveted market segment.

Can't buy things without money though. And it seems studies show that people 50+ spend more

Have you ever heard of the Home Shopping Network?

As the butt of jokes and target of mockery, yes.

It is an empire built on old people impulse shopping.

Just Facebook itself or also Instagram and Whatsapp?

My wife and I and most of our friends use it daily and we’re in our 40s.

It’s true that the 20somethinga don’t use it much, but they’re all on Instagram.

I think most people use facebook, just maybe not for the social feed.

I'm in my 20s and It's a reliable way for managing events, group chats and marketplace

I use it everyday. What’s up?

I know many people under 50 who use instagram. Almost everyone in fact.

I don't know anyone who uses Facebook creatively or as a primary vehicle for widely-shared creative or entertaining content. Certainly nothing like Instagram or TikTok.

What about whatsapp? It’s huuuuuge.

I see a lot of young people who end up creating (mostly empty) Facebook profiles jut to use the groups features or for events. There still isn't a good alternative to those on Intagram or other platforms, and my guess is as young people get older they start having to use Facebook in some way.

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