
Facebook Campus - uptown
https://about.fb.com/news/2020/09/introducing-facebook-campus/
======
s3r3nity
I think the Facebook site will be _very_ different in the next few years than
what we're traditionally used to.

The strategy that Facebook has been pivoting towards is in favor of smaller
community building, rather than the "mass market square" approach, which is
why:

1) Groups have been more prominent and getting quite a bit of promotion

2) Messenger has gotten quite a bit of UX improvements

3) New features like "Rooms," which favor small / intimate video conversations

4) Investments in hardware experiences like Portal, which have been heavily
marketed towards family communication thus far (successfully it seems, looking
at their last revenue #'s.)

5) Facebook Workplace, which was a smart B2B play anyway, but also aligns with
their "micro-community" approach

Zuck messaged this new pivot IIRC around the last US presidential election,
but it may have started before that. Therefore I would expect to see more of
these types of experiences:

"Facebook Campus" \- "Facebook Workplace" \- "Facebook [TBD]"

~~~
bastardoperator
But who likes this stuff? Who really wants to use it? I don't know anyone
especially the younger crowd as I have teenagers, that want anything to do
with facebook

~~~
pavlov
I don't know about those specific features, but I'm always surprised how
people make assumptions about a global service with over two billion users
based on an extremely local sample of anecdotes.

"I don't think anybody in the world buys fish because I live in Montana and my
kids hate it"

~~~
bastardoperator
You assume I assume. This is well documented and highly reported on.

"According to a recent study by Edison Research, Facebook is hemorrhaging
users in the US, losing about 15 million people since 2017. The largest drop
is among teen users and millennials."

"As of February 2019, 62% of 12-34 year olds in the US log into Facebook. This
is down from 79% in 2017, and represents about 11 million of of the overall
decrease"

"Senior citizens in the US are the fastest growing group of Facebook users,
nearly doubling in numbers between 2012 and 2019, a vast shift from the
platform’s beginnings as a service for college students."

Hearing younger folks say the same thing first hand only validates the
research and the numerous articles. All of the statistical data can be skewed
and I imagine any small study (pew, edison) is going to have different
results. So where does that leave me? We'll when you have backyard full of
teenagers that are all well off with mobile devices and all of them tell you
facebook is for boomers and talking to grandma, that tends to hold a little
weight coupled with some of the statistical data. Interestingly enough we can
find data that makes the opposite claim so what does one do when presented
with competing data? They use the data they have which in this case is
directly from a reputable demographic/source.

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libraryofbabel
_I stood on a hill and I saw the Old approaching, but it came as the New. It
hobbled up on new crutches which no one had ever seen before and stank of new
smells of decay which no one had ever smelt before._

Bertolt Brecht, Parade of the Old New. (1939)

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adim86
I think Facebook is bleeding college age people to Instagram (yes I know it is
owned by FB), snapchat and the likes and this is serious ad revenue, if
allowed to continue all spells the death of a platform. Form me this is a
signal of fear or desperation to save the website facebook. Facebook the
company is VERY fine and healthy, but I think Facebook the website is in
trouble

~~~
nerevarthelame
The release of this certainly means that they don't think that they're
reaching as many college students as they could, which might be framed
desperation, given FB's origins. But I personally think that's an overly
pessimistic interpretation. I'm not sure what signs would point to the
Facebook platform as a whole approaching "death." Their number of active users
(for just Facebook, not Instagram or anything else) have been consistently
growing each quarter - even specifically in the US.

~~~
graham_paul
It doesn't matter that you are getting more users if those users are old and
that's basically what is happening to Facebook. FB these days is just a place
where content gets recycled, original content, viral memes and cultural trends
happen elsewhere (TT, IG, etc). Just try to list the number of public figures
(that young people care about) that use FB as its main channel? Now compare
that against TT, IG, etc.

FB managed to buy IG and WhatsApp but they won't always be able to buy their
competitor or copy them

~~~
ffggvv
why does it not matter if they are old?

i could see the argument that they spend less money than other demographics
but not that it doesnt matter

~~~
graham_paul
because the youth is the future. Investing in young users is investing long-
term. Young users is potential future money, old users is immediate but short
lived money stream. I didn't mean to say that it didn't matter but FB is
obviously looking at the future

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stinger
Did facebook just relaunch facebook?

~~~
holler
lol, so meta...

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throwawaysea
When Facebook first launched and was only available on certain campuses, it
had an intimate and safe feeling. It was used primarily to share experiences
with friends. The site was simple and compact. Feeds had a high signal to
noise ratio, and it was about personal connection rather than political
warfare. Somehow, unless they take on a content policy that bans
news/politics/etc, I doubt they can get back to that place from where society
is today. Even if the software was exactly the same as it was, _we_ have
changed and we have been changed in large part by social media these last 15
years.

~~~
kube-system
A ban on political content won’t make fb what it was before. The toxic
political content is a symptom of the problem, not a cause.

The community is the difference. Social bubbles on fb are now huge, and
include people with wildly varying ideas for what they want to get out of
social media. People naturally segregate different aspects of their social
life in their real-world interactions, but that nuance is completely lost on
fb.

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minimaxir
Surprisingly, Harvard is not on the list of trial colleges.

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digitalsushi
Jokes aside that this is how FB started, I wonder if this is a reaction to
recent claims that FB has a general political slant, and that this might be a
way to isolate and segregate people associated with colleges.

~~~
munificent
_> I wonder if this is a reaction to recent claims that FB has a general
political slant_

I don't want to generalize too much from my own window into Facebook, but it
does look like they may be in a feedback loop. As more and more toxic
conservative garbage gets reshared, progressives start ditching Facebook. That
means the remaining userbase likes that stuff more, so the feed gets tuned to
make it more prominent. That turns off more progressives, who drop out. Rinse,
lather, repeat.

When I go on Facebook now, it looks like Internet Fox News, and that's despite
trying very hard to unfollow the people who reshare that stuff.

Even the left-leaning content on Facebook has gotten more extreme and
virulent. It's just a miserable hellhole now of two tribes screaming at each
other while the feed AI fans the flames.

~~~
bmarquez
> As more and more toxic conservative garbage gets reshared, progressives
> start ditching Facebook.

I think this is a function of the friends you have, and what Facebook assumes
you like to see based on the pages your friends like (lookalike audience
targeting). When I was more active on Facebook, there was a lot of left-wing
direct action, and zero Fox News stuff.

Maybe find different friends :)

~~~
dvtrn
_Maybe find different friends :)_

Has anyone actually ever taken this advice when receiving it in the context of
frustrating social media content? I see people throwing this advice around a
LOT in these discussions and have always tried to find someone who actually
went and did it just because someone on the internet said to.

Curious how well it worked. It sounds about as useful advice as telling
someone to “just” get another job after mildly venting about a rough day at
the office (or on zoom, given the state of things here recently), which is
something we’ve all done just to decompress I would imagine.

~~~
searchableguy
I wonder if pay to remove a post model would work well. Moderation costs money
and by pay walling the report button, you can insure that only real cases are
reported and take action.

~~~
dvtrn
Well there is the "Hide Post" feature, which back when I still even _had_ a FB
account I would use with extreme prejudice and can be used free of charge. It
was quite helpful before finally making the decision to just leave the
platform entirely.

Personal curation _is_ a thing, which I think will solve the case for a non-
trivial amount of people, if more were intentional and deliberate about it,
but it stops short personally of getting 'better' friends.

Which...I just think is unhelpful advice unless an individual is truly and
consistently harming the friendship with their actions and behaviors.

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ve55
I view one of the largest reasons for this as trying to ensure they keep user
retention for younger demographics for live chat, which they've been lagging
behind quite a bit compared to e.g. Discord. If Facebook completely loses
their young demographic network effects it would be very difficult for them to
regain them.

This will be tough as Discord is currently happily enjoying its unlimited
growth and no profits phase, and has enough network effects that it's almost
impossible to not use it as a young Internet-using male in many countries.

~~~
Nbox9
> If Facebook completely loses their young demographic network effects it
> would be very difficult for them to regain them.

Facebook has had incredible success at mimicking other companies’ features,
and when that fails purchasing major competitors. Discord is still niche, and
I suspect their marketing and image will make it hard to break out of ‘gamer’
culture.

~~~
ve55
I disagree that Discord is niche at this point. They're already worth several
billion and it's still growing significantly, with perhaps several hundred
million users and very high user-retention, usage, network effects, and
proprietary lock-in. I'd _still_ invest in Discord today if I could, in a
heartbeat.

~~~
codr7
Did it ever occur to you that we collectively shape our societies by the
choices we make?

From my perspective, the last thing we need is more Facebooks and Twitters.

~~~
erikpukinskis
From my perspective, I think we need millions more more Facebooks and
Twitters. Maybe billions.

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tylercubell
Yo dawg, I heard you like Facebook, so I put a Facebook in your Facebook so
you can Facebook while you Facebook.

------
nscalf
Aside from the "Facebook just launched Facebook" side of this, I think it's
really interesting that they're launching this on Facebook instead of
acquiring/building a new network. It seems like social networks roll on
cycles, you don't want to use your older sibling's social network. Their
acquisitions also hint that they agree. My guess is that there is some concern
internally about owning another major social network, combined with dropping
numbers of young people coming on to Facebook.

~~~
asdfman123
Speculating: maybe they want to pipeline former students to their main product
after they graduate.

Maybe they decided instead of risk another social media site going through the
same lifecycle as Facebook did and fragmenting market share, they could keep
it all under one roof. I suppose it could also be an attempt to keep the
engineering simpler, too.

Hardly an expert, though.

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beenBoutIT
Keeping college separate from the world at large is a good idea. Back when
Facebook was exclusive to people with university '.edu' email accounts there
was a massive shitstorm when everything got opened up to the general public.
All of the sudden pictures of students drinking and doing drugs were visible
to potential employers, non-students and the 'real world'. It seems that this
new Facebook for universities won't have the same problem as it's not going to
be merged back with regular FB.

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maxaht
This would have been really cool maybe 8 years ago. Almost everyone I know at
my university uses Facebook only for sharing "life updates" with older
relatives who aren't on more trendy social media sites.

~~~
ericlewis
This was really cool about 16 years ago, when Facebook launched. Because this
is what Facebook used to be.

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ghostpepper
> Today, we are launching Facebook Campus, a college-only space

This seems strangely familiar...

~~~
fredley
I remember the early days, when you could only join with a university account,
and the only people you could interact with were others in the same network.

Privacy controls were 'public' by default, but then the only people seeing
stuff were fellow students anyway. It was fantastic.

I deleted my Facebook account a few years ago for various reasons, but they
had a really great product back then. Somehow I doubt this will capture the
charm of v1.

~~~
gxqoz
The killer feature for me in Facebook's early days is that people could list
the classes they had. This made it easy to message your classmates to get help
on an assignment.

~~~
asveikau
I remember when they killed that feature. It was the same time they introduced
an app platform.

To replace the feature, there were competing class list apps, each requiring
users install it and with its own data, so none of them worked.

I remember thinking whoever made that decision probably didn't understand the
feature. But they sure were motivated to build an app ecosystem nobody asked
for.

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actuator
If FB doesn't have a play on education yet, they might want to capitalise on
remote classes through video/transcripts. Possibly have a piazza equivalent
built in and make it more accessible to schools.

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kome
My university is a joke, and therefore I am sure they will adopt this soon
without thinking to any of the consequences.

Basically Facebook want to fully substitute email within colleges.

What could go wrong?

This is not for users, it is more for university admins.

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xxpor
Did Facebook invent a time machine to go back to 15 years ago?

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chendragon
Might be unrelated, but when I visit this page in a private browsing session
on iOS 14 and play the video I get a modal saying Facebook would like to use
cookies and website data, and if you allow they can track me. If I don't
allow, the video stops playing. If I do nothing, the video plays in the
background.

[https://ibb.co/Bc2t2mK](https://ibb.co/Bc2t2mK)

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tempodox
That name sounds like a place where you can get a degree in user tracking. I'm
almost disappointed.

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koolba
Any idea if the schools are getting directly or indirectly paid to be a part
of this?

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choiway
Is this an April Fools joke?

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limeblack
A mobile version of messenger.com would be nice also.

On budget phones(think 8GBs) web apps are the best solution but yet there is
only a mobile version of Facebook.com.

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bcatanzaro
The circle of life has rotated - we're now in a position where "Facebook but
for Facebook" is an innovation. ;)

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sriram_sun
So cost of entry is $20k and up per year? In other news, Deans of admission
might be silently thanking Zuck for this feature!

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12xo
Facebook is AOL circa 1997. When it seemed that they'd be a dominate player
forever... Fast forward a few years and were are almost non-existent. A few
more and they were gone all together.

Never forget that the internet is awash in dead companies and sites that were
extremely popular and powerful, until they werent.

Facebook is a giant, but its dominance in the USA and the EU is likely short
lived.

~~~
dweekly
And the same comment was made about Facebook practically a decade ago,
pointing to MySpace and Friendster. Yet DAU, MAU, and engagement continue to
grow. Some of this, perhaps, is due to Facebook's keen awareness of its own
mortality and the several times that they had to navigate out of near
existential crises. Just look on the backside of the logo out front of their
HQ. Memento mori.

~~~
12xo
Yeah but those are not my comments, and it's not today.

It is not competition that will kill Facebook, its the change in people's
behavior. Very different from the competitive view you take.

The death of Facebook will be from both in how people interact with each other
and tech. Whether its a fundamental shift in comm(mobile phones) or a leap in
tech like serverless / peer to peer that removes the need for a central
service. Eventually, Facebook will not exist anywhere near its current form.

Remember, FB not a service like Google that serves the user. You dont need
them to do anything but connect to other people. If you dont need to use FB,
you wont. For now, its easier and working very well at scale. But that's
temporary. Maybe 10 years. Maybe longer... One day it too will be a memory,
owned and operated by a PE firm that specializes in brands.

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jl2718
Next will be Facebook takes on business networks with something like Blind
with strong identity.

~~~
b_ocu
Checkout workplace.com

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azangru
They want to make Facebook cool again?

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jimmysong
I guess Facebook is coming for Reddit.

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bilater
Did they just...go back to 2006?

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nateburke
Announcing:

Microsoft Operating System

Amazon Online Bookstore

Google Internet Search

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IvyMike
The Poochie of social networks.

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zacharycohn
Everything old is new again.

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ape4
"Hello fellow kids"

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rllearneratwork
glad to see my alma mater NOT in the list.

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gdsdfe
haha full circle

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smoyer
> Today, we are launching Facebook Campus, a college-only space designed to
> help students connect with fellow classmates over shared interests. Facebook
> Campus makes it easy to find and start conversations within your college
> community.

Tomorrow we're rebranding as "TheFacebook" and will only be available to
Harvard students.

~~~
servercobra
Amusingly, it is not launching for Harvard students this time around. The
campus list seems very odd and scattershot.

~~~
saagarjha
This sounds par for the course for any sort of rollout of technology in
education.

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deeeeeplearning
Actually Mindblown. Next thing you know Google is going to release "Google
Search, find what you're looking for on the internet!"

~~~
bcatanzaro
You know. A product focused only on search and not on advertising, where the
goal was really to help people find what they're looking for - that might be a
revolutionary product. And Google would be in a great position to launch it...

