
How Facebook keeps getting more addictive - kjhughes
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/04/facebook_news_feed_edgerank_facebook_algorithms_facebook_machine_learning.single.html
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rootedbox
"Daily Active Users (DAUs). We define a daily active user as a registered
Facebook user who logged in and visited Facebook through our website or a
mobile device, or took an action to share content or activity with his or her
Facebook friends or connections via a third-party website or app that is
integrated with Facebook, on a given day. We view DAUs, and DAUs as a
percentage of MAUs, as measures of user engagement."

instagram and other sites that use Facebook login count for DAU.

So is Facebook becoming more addictive or just more integrated.

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mathattack
Amongst my peer group, it seems like activity is down except for a core group
(<5%) of very heavy users. Now it could be that Facebook is just zeroing in on
the people I have tended to like more, and this becomes self fulfilling, but
generally my peers don't seem to be using it as much.

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rhizome
It sounds to me like they're just equating touching the site with "doing
stuff." I'll bet dollars to donuts that if they split out no-shares from
sharers (or even segments concerning likes, comments, actual shares, etc.) it
would look a lot worse for them.

~~~
mathattack
I'm sure they have the positive metrics and the negative ones. They share the
positive ones for Wall Street. The real question of their culture is does Mark
Z also dwell on the negative ones internally in order to change behavior? Or
is his spending his time looking externally?

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cliveowen
I was wondering if it would be possible for Facebook to fake their usage
numbers. I mean, its valuation is closely tied to the number of users and not
so long ago everyone thought Facebook was close to saturation, now suddenly
they managed to increase the number of users. How can a stockholder know if
the numbers they publish are real? It looks to me that it would be possible to
increase revenue while the number of users stays flat, so that's not a useful
measure.

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danso
Sorry, but this is a blatant begging of the question:

\- " _not so long ago everyone thought Facebook was close to saturation_ "

\- " _now suddenly they managed to increase the number of users_ "

Maybe "everyone" was wrong? In any case, faking such numbers on a large scale
would require a decent-sized conspiracy among at least a couple of department
heads. Also, it would be quite illegal. And, being a digital thing, very easy
for someone to prove.

However, it's possible that the way they characterize numbers has changed, but
those details would presumably be in the official filings and financial
reports. For example, in recent years, the newspapers audit circulation bureau
has changed readership numbers to include categories of web users, not just
print circulation. And even before the web, the numbers included an estimated
number of readers who read non-bought copies of a paper (i.e., papers left at
the coffee shop and passed around).

So there could be different standards of counting...in fact, that's a much
easier, more legal way of doing things before you start maliciously faking
stats.

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andrenotgiant
Facebook is pretty thorough with its explanations of Daily Active Users (DAU)
measurements in its SEC filings:

"Daily Active Users (DAUs). We define a daily active user as a registered
Facebook user who logged in and visited Facebook through our website or a
mobile device, or took an action to share content or activity with his or her
Facebook friends or connections via a third-party website or app that is
integrated with Facebook, on a given day. We view DAUs, and DAUs as a
percentage of MAUs, as measures of user engagement."

Going back to the first SEC Filing from July 2012. There is ONE KEY DIFFERENCE
in definition of a DAU.

Jul 2012 DAU: "...or took an action to share content or activity... ...via a
third-party website that is integrated with Facebook." Ref:
[http://investor.fb.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-12-325...](http://investor.fb.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-12-325997&CIK=1326801)

Nov 2013 DAU: "...or took action to share content or activity... ...via a
third-party website _or app_ that is integrated with Facebook." Ref:
[http://investor.fb.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1326801-13-31&...](http://investor.fb.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1326801-13-31&CIK=1326801)

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rootedbox
i.e. people are just using instagram more, and this counts as DAU.

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andrenotgiant
Instagram does not count as DAU - Read the first page of this filing:
[http://investor.fb.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1326801-13-31&...](http://investor.fb.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1326801-13-31&CIK=1326801)

~~~
thesis
But if i click the little FB icon when I post to Instagram, that makes it
count as a DAU.

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spacemanmatt
I wonder if the algorithms might reveal how they've become only more repellant
to me over time.

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smrtinsert
And everyone in my network as well.

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conradfr
Is it an algorithm that randomly revert my choice to display my newsfeed in
chronological order ?

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omonra
I have a different method. I only friend people I know in real life, read FB
newsfeed in chronological order (FB Purity handles that) and I unfollow those
who post dumb shit.

~~~
Moneta_xi
That's basically what do too. One change is my night job is in nightlife. So
I've set up a group that I dump all those people. So I can unfollow them and
they only see what I want them to see on my wall.

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buzaga41
as someone who is not a fan of Facebook but uses, I've got to admit I noticed
they did something and I've been using the site more recently, and that it's
better recently.

Mainly, I've increased the number of news sites I 'like' and I'm getting my
news much more through FB recently, I already used to 'unfollow' people who
post worthless stuff frequently, so I'd guess my Timeline is at a good
'configuration'

I've been tuning down my consumption of mainstream media greatly and have been
following more `real`, `credible` journalism, as well as more 'community'
content e.g.: friends bands, friends projects, local initiatives, fun/comedy
pages that refutes backward thinking and political discussions relevant to my
area of the world, this is also making me less engaged in, for example, Hacker
News because I'm becoming less interested in US matters etc, so, I've got to
say that my views on the Bad of Facebook are softening and I'm seeing some
Good, although it feels a bit weird to say this :)

Obviously it's not all flowers tho, as much as I may be getting 'bubbled', the
same people that have views that I see as backwards are probably getting their
own confirmation-bias version...

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SixSigma
> Each time you log in, Facebook’s algorithms choose from about 1,500 possible
> posts to place at the top of your News Feed.

No it doesn't. Facebook Purity re-orders my timeline by most recent.

No ads, no games, no Trending, no nonsense. The way you would have Facebook if
you could choose.

[http://www.fbpurity.com/](http://www.fbpurity.com/)

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argumentum
For a website associating itself with "purity", they've done a great job
dirtying up their website.

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gadders
>> As much work and data—your data—as Facebook feeds into its targeted
advertising, it works at least as hard at figuring out which of your friends’
posts you’re most likely to want to see each time you open the app.

No it doesn't. I want to see everything, in date order. I can hide crap I
don't want to see myself.

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jonnathanson
In theory, sure. In practice, all that stuff adds up very quickly.

Let's assume you have ~500 friends. Assume each of those friends posts at
least once a day. That's 500 posts _per day_ that you'd need to sift through,
in chronological order. There's no way most people would be able to do that,
maintaining a clear mental backlog day in and day out, and consistently find
the comments they like. This would be a serious needle-in-the-haystack
problem. The brute force of one's time, reading speed, and strength of intent
might be able to solve it for maybe a few days before giving up.

And those numbers are simplistic estimates. If anything, they are
spectacularly conservative.

I'm not suggesting that FB's methods always get things right. There's a LOT of
room for improvement. But _some_ automated sorting process is better than its
complete absence, as much as we'd like to think it's not. Most people can't
process as much information as comes through a typical news feed on a typical
week.

Now, what about email? Isn't that similar? Don't some of us, especially in
busy offices, get hundreds of emails a day and manage just fine? Sure. The
difference is that most email is pre-"selected" for us, on account of the
sender's intent that we read it. We're not just being bombarded by every stray
thought that occurs to senders. We're not being cc'ed on all the email our
contacts send. A completely unsorted Facebook newsfeed would be a bit like
getting cc'ed on every email sent by your network, every day.

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callesgg
I kind of doesn't, at least for me.

And also Facebook seams to have no idea what I want to see. As all I see when
I log in is mostly stuff about people I don't know. I would much rather see
everything and filter it myself.

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DanielBMarkham
If you care about the time you spend online, you owe it to yourself to start
actively installing and using programs that take the addictiveness out of
content. F.B.Purify is a good start for Facebook users.

