Whenever I see a post like this on HN, I see the inevitable "the product sucks" posts in the comments.
As an engineer and social media user, I completely agree, but it doesn't seem to be bearing out in the marketplace. Facebook continues to grow[0] (if more slowly).
So what is the HN audience to Facebook? Our we taste makers? A demographic ahead of the product curve, predictive of Facebook's imminent decline?
Or are we simply irrelevant to the mass market? Are we the people going to the art house movie theaters while the masses flood into multiplexes for the latest Marvel sensory overload spectacle?
The number of folks here and on reddit and even back to Slashdot who had and continue to have negative reactions to incredibly popular things shows that it's really hard for techies to predict what will become a success. I don't think we're irrelevant or out of touch, I just think we really are in a market all our own.
Look at the overwhelmingly negative response to the iPod, which then went on to destroy CD players and every other brand of MP3 player, right up to the point where people just used their iPhone for MP3s, when the techie audience bemoaned the death of the iPod because their music library was too big to fit on a cell phone, at which point the mainstream switched to streaming services so no one noticed. Luckily there are still niche products catering to our needs.
Look at the complaints about the iPhone with no multitasking and no physical keyboard and no user-replaceable battery and no stylus, and the massive success it had which ultimately killed Palm, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry. Luckily there are still niche products catering to our needs.
Look at the complaints about the iPad, which killed the techie-favored netbooks. Luckily there are still niche products catering to our needs.
My rule of thumb is, if HN/Reddit/etc hates it because it doesn't have enough features, it's going to be a massive success in the mainstream market.
I suspect you're making the usual mistake of assuming the vocal people are representative. Most of the users post nothing, and many of the rest post very little.
The people you see posting (you and I included) are weird. Betting against the product choices of wierd people is probably at least somewhat effective as an investment strategy.
My gut instinct is both: HN can spot a tech product in decline faster than the majority of people, and I believe we’ll slowly see more and more people move away, along with a lack of younger folks coming onboard. But not everyone will depart: I think Facebook will decline but not cease to exist. It’s the new “TV” to a certain chunk of the population.
I thought the same about MySpace and Digg after they were both eclipsed by Facebook and Reddit respectively - but to my surprise the owners both shut them down and relaunched reinvented versions many years later.
the growth they present is not telling the whole truth. So called MAU and DAU can be for example a person like me who hasnt been on fb.com for 2 months, yet when I visit newspapers and scroll to bottom I see facebook comments section with my profile picture on. Meaning FB will now count me as an DAU/MAU.
Look beyond those selective statistics, FB.com is dead.
>Look beyond those selective statistics, FB.com is dead.
That's a bit of a strange conclusion when their financials show increasing revenue and increasing profit, quarter over quarter and year over year. From 2016 to 2017 their revenue grew almost 50% as did their Net Income[0].
It's not all roses of course, but it's hardly dead.
They are squeezing every last drop out of their userbase, but the numbers do not lie. Decreasing DAU/MAU in their most profitable demographics means that their revenue numbers will eventually suffer.
Ah, I meant North American users, which are the highest ARPU users for Facebook. I don't know the breakdown of ARPU for different age demographics within NA.
> So what is the HN audience to Facebook? Our we taste makers? A demographic ahead of the product curve, predictive of Facebook's imminent decline?
We certainly aren't taste makers. HN is so small that it is irrelevant.
> Are we the people going to the art house movie theaters while the masses flood into multiplexes for the latest Marvel sensory overload spectacle?
We are just victims of the ongoing media campaign against facebook and social media. Once facebook gives in, the media will shift their hate to something else. Every time I come on HN, it's the same old facebook story. So just do what I do and click "hide" whenever you see an article about facebook on HN.
I wish HN would offer us the ability to filter our stories. I don't have facebook. Never used it ( I'm a unicorn ). I don't want to read headlines about it every day on HN.
I'm slightly puzzled by the degree of negativity to facebook for example as I quite like it. My theory is HN folk analyse things more deeply than the public and worry about stuff. For me facebook is something where I can post some pics and see some friends and message them and that's about it.
Just like anything - the techies and first adopters tend to set the trends. If the HN crowd thinks its useless then it will start to trickle down to Normies, might take awhile though.
I've noticed as a techie that I've actually run behind a batch of what you call normies, that decided to quit or entirely restrict their FB activity many years ago due to unwanted social drama / conflict.
About ~8-10% of my Facebook friends quit over a four or five year span. Typically not long after joining Facebook and beginning to contribute (within a year or so). Those accounts have all just been sitting there quasi-dead with blank images, for many years (although they're still on my friends list, and no doubt counted by FB as a user (but not a MAU)). None of them have ever come back alive.
I think we're just not the target market. By "we" I don't really mean HN, I mean just developers in general. Sample size of one, but I know in my own social circle, male techies = not really social media users. I think it probably has a lot to do with extraversion vs. introversion, and also if you happen to have some personal traits that tend to be social media friendly (photogenic, popular, etc.)
The product sucking and the product being popular aren't exactly mutually exclusive. Something could make all of the people who use it miserable but still be addictive enough to become and stay popular.
(I don't think it's solely this. I figure it's a mix of this and both things you said.)
That because Facebook was smart to purchase competing services such as Instagram and WhatsApp.
I believe a lot of comments are about their main site which I also agree that got dramatically worse and no longer provides the same value it once did.
As an engineer and social media user, I completely agree, but it doesn't seem to be bearing out in the marketplace. Facebook continues to grow[0] (if more slowly).
So what is the HN audience to Facebook? Our we taste makers? A demographic ahead of the product curve, predictive of Facebook's imminent decline?
Or are we simply irrelevant to the mass market? Are we the people going to the art house movie theaters while the masses flood into multiplexes for the latest Marvel sensory overload spectacle?
[0]https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/31/facebook-q4-2017-earnings/