
Facebook 'boring'? 1 in 3 users are tuning it out - Garbage
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57447316-93/facebook-boring-1-in-3-users-are-tuning-it-out/
======
simonsarris
66% of users are tuning in? That's great!

Every time a Facebook usage topic comes up there's the usual round of scorn
usually backed up by a strange display of plumage involving the sentence, "I
just deleted my facebook yesterday/last month/last year/never used it."

And that's _okay._ But I want to point out to my fellow HN-goers why facebook
is so wonderful. There's also a note about privacy at the bottom[1] since that
seems to be a big reason people stay away. I feel as if a lot of people here
missed the point and doesn't understand what the average person sees in this
system. I'll try to relay my experience in the hopes that you see the utility.

To most people, especially a shy person, the usefulness of the site is
_astronomical._

Among others I am friends with my boss, my mother, my little cousins. Facebook
lets shy people like me keep in touch with a massive amount of people where I
can write them the modern equivalent of letters very quickly and easily, as
well as let them broadcast their life's updates to me. I can keep in touch
with all manner of people. I love writing letters, people love getting
letters. Facebook is not far off.

Without facebook, I'd have no idea cousin X is having a baby, or that Y is
having apartment trouble that I can help them with, or that Z got a new game
we can play together, or person A is considering selling their car, and so on.

If I meet someone at an event and really hit it off (romantically or not), I
can go on facebook the next day and look them up by name and add them. No
exchanging phone numbers or emails or anything like that. I just search for
them and find them. In college it was enormously useful for making friends and
I still find it useful now that I've graduated.

I made a page for my hometown (90K population city in NH). I broadcast events
going on around the city (fireworks, beer festival, city meetings). In this
way I help my community learn about the goings-on of the town. It's a
surprisingly popular page (more popular than the local newspaper's facebook
page).

These functions in times past were done with the laborous process of making a
million letters or phone calls or in many cases (like my hometown page)
scarcely made or not made at all.

Literally, facebook is a modern "An open letter to my friends" system. And
it's great at it.

~~~~~~

Okay that's off my chest.

Sadly as of late its getting a little less great at its function. A lot of the
reason for the downturn in usage, sadly, is probably due to the fact that
every ad, every sponsored story and sponsored "like" is adding to a
signal/noise ratio that will make people frown. It's a shame that facebook's
financial success as the model is right now is directly competing with its
utility[2], but oh-well. We may have to sigh a bit more, but its still
extremely useful to the casual user and has the usage stats to show it.

[1] I don't think privacy alone is enough to negate the utility of fbook. All
of my privacy options are on the lowest possible setting. I treat anything
that occurs on the site as if it were public. I don't see why not, I'm not
going to pretend that photos of myself or my wall postings are anywhere near
interesting enough to hide. In fact I'm not sure why people who put things on
facebook want privacy at all. I never worry that something I say might be
picked up on by the wrong person because I'd never say anything that I
wouldn't want the world to hear.

[2] It may be worth pointing out that I love facebook but would never invest
in it for a few reasons, and this is one of them. One could argue Google ads
make Google searches more useful. Facebook ads, as they are today, _directly_
impinge on the utility of the platform. But thats a separate topic

~~~
jdminhbg
> These functions in times past were done with the laborous process of making
> a million letters or phone calls or in many cases (like my hometown page)
> scarcely made or not made at all.

Or with Geocities? FB hardly invented the concept of a page on the internet
where events are listed. I'm sure it provides some nice functionality around
calendaring and networking, but we didn't go from xeroxed fliers to Facebook
with nothing in between.

Personally, I didn't delete my FB account because of privacy issues, I deleted
it to make FB less useful to people who know me. Using the site was a constant
exercise in using the site, rather than gaining utility out of it -- hiding
apps, hiding people, keeping up with baby photos. Now that I don't have an
account, nobody tries to message me or expects me to see something they
posted; the social obligation's gone. I don't have to wade through 50
Farmville clone updates to get to an important message someone sent me. It's
in my email now.

~~~
Karunamon
> I don't have to wade through 50 Farmville clone updates to get to an
> important message someone sent me. It's in my email now.

And no offense, but you suck at Facebook then. Blocking apps is a two click
operation. Sending a message to your friends/relatives along the lines of
"Don't send me game requests" isn't difficult either.

~~~
jdminhbg
> And no offense, but you suck at Facebook then.

None taken, but this is exactly my point. I don't want to be "good at
Facebook," I just want to know what's going on. Constantly having to complete
"two click operations" to hide new games in order to find the one piece of
information I actually care about sucks; I don't want to do it.

------
maukdaddy
Here's the original source, without the blogspammed ads:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/05/net-us-facebook-
su...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/05/net-us-facebook-survey-
idUSBRE85400C20120605)

------
chaz
The metric that continues to really impress me about Facebook: 58% of users
log in each day (that's 526mm DAU out of 901mm MAU, according to its SEC
filing). That's roughly the same percentage as it was in 2007, when I first
heard that kind of stat.

I love customer surveys, but I don't think people are good at estimating how
they actually spend their time or how frequently they do things.

~~~
r00fus
What does this DAU indicate, actually - are these pageviews on a facebook.com
website that are associated with potential advertising?

Or are they related to the numerous and growing uses of FB as an identity
provider?

~~~
dfc
Daily Active Users / Monthly Active Users

~~~
reitzensteinm
He's not asking what the acronymn stands for; he's asking whether it counts as
a 'use' if you use Facebook to login to a third party site, or hit a like
button, but you don't visit Facebook itself that day.

I'd like to know as well.

------
ajays
My status updates have gone from about 1/day a couple of years ago, to about
1/week now. Even though I've blocked all apps, etc., I find FB to be too
noisy. The only thing I like about FB is that I can keep track of friends'
events, like babies, marriages, breakups, trips, etc.

~~~
trebuch3t
Agreed. Facebook has turned into a stream of blabber and pictures of people's
kids (no offence).

What is NOT noisy is:

* Path (just my close friends)

* Pair (just my girlfriend)

* Google+ (the "what's hot" news feed is actually pretty interesting)

~~~
rscale
Out of curiousity, what's the value-add of Pair versus just using SMS/MMS? I
looked at their website but I didn't "get it".

~~~
brk
Part of it is certainly the novelty factor. You can only be "paired" with
exactly 1 other person.

Part of it (for me), is that communications with my wife are via a separate
stack, separate notifications that are easier to manage, and the ability to
share more than you can in MMS (a silly sketch, or a map location).

Pair cuts out all the "noise" of other systems and gives you something that
makes you feel like communications with that one other person are something
more unique and "out of band" than all your other notification streams.

Personally, I haven't figured out if Pair is a product or a feature, but that
doesn't really matter to me right now.

------
ph33r
Just checked the list of apps I am 'hiding' from my News Feed... It's no
wonder people are tuning it out:

Angry Birds Friends, Battle Pirates, Bejeweled Blitz, Bingo Island, Budweiser
King Club, Camelot: The Game, CastleVille Daily Horoscope, Family Feud, Games
on Mindjolt, Happy Pets, Hidden Chronicles, Hockey Pool, Horoscopes, Light of
Nova, Lucky Slots: Reno, Marvel: Avengers Alliance, Miner Speed, Mirrorball
Slots, Pet Society, QBet Casino, Quiz Whiz, Quotev, Ravenskye City, Ravenwood
Fair, Restaurant City, SCRABBLE, Slotomania - Slot Machines, Treasure Isle,
War Commander, Washington Post Social Reader, WeTopia, What is your old lady
name?, Zoo World, Zuma Blitz

~~~
evincarofautumn
The “Social Reader” applications are the worst. All I end up doing is Googling
the article title.

Luckily, I don’t think Yahoo! and the Washington Post care an awful lot about
the sort of people who log into Facebook at most once a week, and then mainly
to use chat.

~~~
CompiledCode
Agreed. Ads are ubiquitous (I just tune them out), but clicking a link and
being told "you can't read this unless you give us your personal info and let
us tell all of your friends that you read this" is wrong on so many levels.

I think this sort of thing will add to the downfall of facebook. Non-savvy
internet users love facebook, but it only takes one learning experience (such
as seeing broadcast that you read a highly-embarrassing article) for people to
become wary.

~~~
jquery
Social readers are worse than you think. Once you've opted in, even reading a
Yahoo! article via a Google search may show up in your news feed. My boss
potentially seeing me reading articles about "How to ask for a raise" being
the epitome of this. Don't know if he saw or not, but it was a educational
experience nonetheless. I was _trying_ to be careful and I still got burned.

~~~
CompiledCode
Ugh. I wouldn't have thought that. And to think ten years ago people were
worried about cookies... The bar for privacy on the internet has gotten pretty
low.

A friend of mine publicly read "How to improve your sex drive". She's in a
relationship....

------
mikejsiegel
Always take these surveys with a grain of salt. It's difficult to get accurate
information from people self-reporting their behavior. Facebook has become so
ingrained in peoples' routines that they don't even realize their actual usage
(and in many times are in denial). I'd like to see if Facebook feels their
analytics back up this self-reported data - my gut says it would not.

This is also true about the advertising. Many times effective advertising gets
into the subconscious - you don't realize it's working on you. The ads have to
at least raise awareness of the product.

~~~
mikejsiegel
Here is some data to back up this comment
<http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/06/facebooking/>

------
cft
We have a 18yo intern at the office this summer, who keeps saying "Facebook is
becoming a ghost-town", when we task him with using FB API.

~~~
Splines
Where are the people in your intern's circle of friends going? I'm honestly
curious.

The people in my facebook feed are the usual set of people who post. Nothing
has seemed to change of late.

~~~
cft
He says text and email, and still FB, but not updating as frequently, and
mostly updates from apps, like instagram.

------
kayoone
FB seems to get into a negative press spiral lately because of the
underperforming IPO...suddenly its all just a fad because people want to read
about this new super company failing...

But the truth is, it still has CRAZY numbers in terms of Daily/Weekly/Monthly
Active users and average time spent on the site. Its a behemoth and will not
fall!

~~~
mtgx
Actually, the "Facebook is boring" numbers starting showing up _before_ the
IPO. Now they are just getting more attention. The problem is a real one for
Facebook, whether it gets in the press and on blogs or not.

~~~
toemetoch
They hit the ceiling, I would like to know how this little plot will develop
over the next 2 quarters:

<http://www.google.com/trends/?q=facebook>

~~~
demoo
The interesting part is the information below the graph: most searches in
Turkey, Venezuela, Colombia, Malaysia, Italy, Croatia, Indonesia. Africa
nowhere to be seen though.

------
pchristensen
Facebook fascinating? 2 in 3 users actively engaged!

------
gurkendoktor
I find the idea of Facebook getting boring very interesting. Do people
complain about email or gmail getting boring? Their address book? Skype?
"Safari is boring these days"? For many people, Facebook is a medium. My
girlfriend is busy on the iPad writing stuff in her family's private group. I
am just going through the timeline looking for interesting articles just like
I do on HN.

Now I wonder what people who consider Facebook "boring" did before they left.
Play games or be there just for the novelty of it? Then this is not a loss for
existing users.

I can understand the privacy concerns and the "not useful" answer though, with
the terrible usability & iOS app.

~~~
randomdata
I would say that Facebook positioned themselves as a news outlet, not a
generic communications medium. In the beginning, the news was fresh, you were
learning all kinds of interesting things about your friends; many of whom you
had previously lost touch with. That was exciting and interesting.

After some time passes, you've learned everything you want to know about said
people and the information starts to become stale and repetitive. Combined
with others feeling the same way and pulling back, a feedback loop emerges
where good content starts to dwindle even quicker, worsening the problem.

If I came to HN six months from now and all of the articles were still about
the Facebook IPO, I think I would probably say that HN has become boring too.
That is where, I believe, the sentiment is coming from.

------
kyt
I find it boring because it's dominated by power users that post multiple
times a day. These people may or may not be close to me, but typically they
aren't. My closest friends don't post all that often and when they do they get
drowned out.

------
jreposa
I'm logged out of FB at work for productivity reasons. I read FB probably
about twice a day. Once in the morning and once at night.

I'm not missing much.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
You are voluntarily interacting twice a day and feel like you are constraining
yourself. Other sites _wish_ they could have such "unengaged" users!

------
joseflavio
The funny thing is that in the last one year I use hacker news much more than
Facebook. The stream of news here is way more interesting and heterogeneous.

~~~
solnyshok
Similar. I never bought into idea that my social friends are a good source of
knowledge on topics that interest me most. For professional questions I use
RSS and forums, while many of my old buddies can't tell RSS from SSD. For
shopping, I google reviews and check prices online. And for keeping track of
lives of some 10-15 people that I care about, facebook is too noisy.

------
moistgorilla
I never really got why facebook was considered interesting. I made an account
because I was pressured by some female friends into doing so but I never log
on it (at least 5 months). I know I'm not the norm but still, I feel like
facebook is just a fad and that people will get bored of posting every second
of their life onto the internet eventually.

~~~
ryanmerket
Long distant relationships. My family and close friends are mostly in Texas
while I'm in the Bay Area. I like keeping track of their lives...

~~~
ams6110
I use email to keep in touch with family and close friends. I don't see what
Facebook would do to improve on that.

~~~
ryanmerket
The friction of sharing and reacting to life milestones with all your friends
and family is an order of magnitude easier on Facebook. For example, try
teaching a grandparent or technology inept uncle how to see photos of
grandkids/nieces/nephews through email vs checking Facebook...

~~~
salgernon
My kids grandparents are more appreciative of a photo in a frame or a drawing
on the fridge than an image on a screen. Of course they can pick and choose if
I chose to post those photos on Facebook, but I also take pleasure in curating
and actually spending money to create a print (if I spend money on something,
I'm more likely to do a good job.)

~~~
taligent
What makes you think they are mutually exclusive ?

Because I doubt your grandparents are going to be having hundreds and hundreds
of photo frames of your kids.

------
aaronpeterson
I fear for facebook long-term only because I can't imagine the things I said
when I was 16 lingering around on my timeline forever. Fad or not, facebook's
standing with teenagers today will not be a long-lasting one. High School you
will eventually be abandoned by college you and then again by professional
you. How will facebook synchronize with rites of passage? Maybe this is why
the proponents of facebook are usually 30-somethings...already done morphing
and, as such, don't get it.

------
joseflavio
I use Pidgin to connect to their XMPP chat server. In the real facebook page,
i connect once in a week. I wonder if they count my XMPP login as a regular
login.

------
hu_me
"more than 1,000 Americans surveyed by Reuters and market research firm Ipsos,
21 percent said that they have no Facebook account, leaving 79 percent to
answer questions about their Facebook use."

oh that must be so statistically valid. please base your assumption about 900m
userbase from a 1000+ sample out of which 21% dont have an account to begin
with.

------
EricDeb
I like facebook for its use in corresponding with people I normally would
never contact. It gives me all the window I would ever want into their lives.

For my close friends, FB is essentially useless and actually encourages me to
contact them via phone or face to face less than I should because I feel like
I am keeping up with them through facebook.

------
tosseraccount
The great detox is on. Internet has become too much spying and
exhibition(ism). The pendulum is swinging back and people want more privacy
and less intrusion. Peak social is ex-post facto. I don't care if the great HN
supermoderator doesn't like to hear it.

Something new will come along. We'll call it Web 4.0 and get excited. Make it
happen!

------
chris_wot
I love the fact that CNet had to add a note that they updated the article that
Facebook made a comment that they had no comment.

------
infinitebeam
and my feed is full of rage faces and memes.

~~~
taligent
Get better friends.

------
its_so_on
I think facebook should charge 75 cents per month to use it.

This will weed out users who just don't care; it will give more information to
advertisers as well.

Oh and what's that? 75 cents per month actually ends up tripling their income!
(if they now get $9 per year off the seventy-five cents, plus the same four in
ad revenue.)

Anyway if even 75 cents per month is too much, then they can go ahead and make
OEM deals etc for a facebook sticker and do like Microsoft did. Or give it
away with cans of coke. One in twenty wins a year of facebook.

Or, you know, do what people expect and roll into the price of a cell phone.

Just some thoughts...

~~~
Drakim
Sorry but terrible idea. Not even 1% of facebook users would stick around. And
before you argue that 1% of the current user base would be great, the
usefulness of a social network is greatly diminished if your friends aren't
there, making eventually even the last 1% leave.

~~~
its_so_on
And your objection to the OEM model?

------
yashchandra
I am definitely one those people. But I know friends/family who spend at least
30 mins per day on fb. May be I am spending too much time on HN and no time
for fb anymore :)

------
yashchandra
For me, fb is useful _only_ to keep an eye on what is going on with my
family/friends specially for things such as cute pictures of their kids,
marriage/birthday events etc. My wife uses her fb time to update me on those.
So personally, I hardly login to fb anymore.

~~~
cdcarter
This is what Facebook's utility for all of us is. Just replace cute photos of
their kids with cute photos of your crush (or ex), and replace marriage events
with house parties, and you've hit what the twenty-somethings on fb do daily.
Anything else is to justify being there.

~~~
yashchandra
Good point. agreed:)

