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Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

> Facebook is dying because they stopped being Facebook

a) No evidence they are dying. All we have is a single quarter's result i.e. statistically meaningless.

b) No evidence that staying true to the original Facebook is the best strategy. Unquestionably, Stories has been a popular feature in both Instagram and Facebook ecosystems and perhaps certain features from TikTok will be the same.

But there is plenty of evidence that the opinions of HN, Reddit etc. often do not match that of the broader public and so should be taken with a grain of salt.

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There's an army of users out there accustomed to and just simply want to see what their friends are up to and posting.

Are they as sexy as the bajillion TikTok users out there? No.

Are they enough to build a solid business aruond? Yes.

Would facebook ever consider stepping up to the plate that built their core business again? No, because Facebook management sucks.

I don't give a shit about algorithmic recommendations and of horse-shit force-fed happiness content don't anticipate ever changing that. Many of my friends are the same way.

What ever happened to servicing the long tail?

> just simply want to see what their friends are up to and posting

People keep saying this is what people want. Show me the numbers that it's true.

Because when Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, Youtube etc. all move to this model and stick with it the evidence is clear that it's not want people want.

Did you ignore the OP's long tail mention on purpose? It may very well be not the majority wants, so we cannot be talking about wishes of any singular "people". And for this reason, this strategy may no be suitable for "growth".

But as a solid, sustainable profit source? Are you claiming that only a marginal number of people want this, or what?

Facebook's ARPU and overall revenue has been continuing to increase even last quarter.

So clearly they know a little bit about what is a solid, sustainable profit source.

> So clearly they know a little bit about what is a solid, sustainable profit source.

It is more than a "solid, sustainable" profit source, it is a best-in-class cash cow that feeds a growing monstrosity for shareholders that want more, more, more.

The business they left behind is still sustainable.

I'm fairly certain that drug dealers' numbers indicate that people "want" more addictive drugs.

Facebook and other social media isn't quite at that level, but the same logic applies to your argument: there are fundamentally different kinds of "wants", and the drug dealer/social media metrics invariably cater to the unhealthy kind.

So what? Let them have TikTok.

The evidence may be clear, but it is also driven by tech that is increasingly effective at pressing our dopamine buttons. I'm not sure that the opinions of a drug-addled constituency are important for the far more simple question of, "is there a sustainable business here?"

I used to see posts from 50-100 friends/family each week. Now I see posts from about 5 of them. I barely use facebook because it crashes my iPad browser (I refuse to install the app) and because the feed is so packed full of autoplay videos I can't stand it. Facebook is "dying" for myself and my entire sphere of friends/family but of course that's just an anecdote.

Ive wondered about the drop in activity. Like is it less busy because people are using it less and it's boring or w/e or are the 20year olds who were posting party pictures everyday and having friend group drama just aren't doing much anymore and grinding through life without shareable stuff

The experience for each person is probably different. I never had that sort of stuff in the first place; mostly just pictures of people's concerts, vacations, dance events, car shows, family gettogethers, home improvement projects, new cars, lots of kid pictures, etc. None of these could compare to the level of "interaction" of the 2016 political cycle, though, so all the good stuff got buried under vitriol and arguments and un-friending and I feel like it never recovered.

> the 20year olds who were posting party pictures everyday and having friend group drama

You're describing Instagram. Facebook has been the "parents' generation water cooler" for several years now. They don't even post "original content" like party pics unless it's an obituary. It's all "shares" of news and political content.

That’s perhaps also the bit that Facebook investors/management ignores. You cannot have over a billion users and expect any significant growth. You also have to accept that any change you do might alianate a small percentage of your existing users.

You may very well be right. Facebook is adjusting their offering to keep a certain segment of users. That will eject another group, or at least reduce their engagement. That’s fine, if it ensures profitability for the next five years.

It’s just interesting to be part of a group of users that aren’t intersting to the social media platforms. Which in a way just confirms that the social media part of Metas business isn’t actually important to them, only the ad revenue that it might bring.

I think it's really difficult to tell if they are dying or not. I don't think MAU or DAU gives the full picture as it doesn't tell us what people are using it for, what sort of new accounts are coming online (are they real people, bots, businesses or what?), and how active people actually are. Are people logging in for easy auth or are they spending more or less time actively browsing the site.

You're right that HN is not the right place to judge this. I will say, as someone who works with high school kids, almost none of them have seemed to use it over the last 4-5 years.

> But there is plenty of evidence that the opinions of HN, Reddit etc. often do not match that of the broader public and so should be taken with a grain of salt.

There is a lot of biases and nonsense in here and in the news being spread around over the death of Facebook (Meta) or even the beginning of its death, which has been greatly exaggerated.

They will be around for another 10+ years.

> No evidence they are dying. All we have is a single quarter's result i.e. statistically meaningless.

But their first down quarter (for users) does say something. No one would be talking about this if it hadn't happened.

It's a quarter where we are seeing an inflation explosion, COVID and international uncertainty which is causing recessionary behaviour. Companies across the IT sector are cutting jobs and revising forecasts either because of actual or expected drop in revenue.

Can't think anyone serious would look to derive any meaning from a single data point in this environment.

For all we know the entire DAU drop could be from Ukraine and Russia alone.

> inflation explosion, COVID and international uncertainty...recessionary behaviour...cutting jobs and revising forecasts...drop in revenue.

Literally none of these things account for people not logging in to FB. In fact, some (all?) of those sound like the sorts of things that would drive engagement among millions of bored and frustrated people.

Inflation = less purchasing power = less effective discretionary income.

That means less to spend on new phones, data plans etc. And more time spent at work.

> For all we know the entire DAU drop could be from Ukraine and Russia alone.

The DAU drop happened before the war, in the quarter up to December 2021.

Did you reply to wrong comment? Did you just have a Google alert for Facebook dying?

My point is you should dispute the original claim that it is life or death for Facebook instead of the subcomment running with that theory.

I think Facebook is doing OK, but they have issues breaching the younger democratic, which is worrying them.

Yeh lol at the facebook is dying bot. I left social media 5yrs ago (no fb, never used tiktok). I remmeber MySpace and how i left it for FB.

You cant build a buisness on a bubble. You can build a bubble and extract money from investors, but honestly, the only people who use facebook are doing it because they are addicted and likely not internet savy. Its like hooking people on sugar. Except fb doesnt own the sugar, and cant only buy up the competition for so long before your no longer the hot stuff investors belevied.

Facebook is a fad. Social media is not, it has overtaken traditional media in less then a decade. Social media will morph, it is not static. You cant own it. And Facebook is not the defination of it anymore.

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