I did some searching a few nights ago and came across this article which mentioned that Facebook's traffic is down by 50% over the past two years (granted published a while back).
Shocking numbers, but I'm not too surprised. As time goes by the platform seems more hollowed out and vacuous. The overwhelming number of my good friends, and people I'd enjoy public conversation with, don't use it at all. And what's left is an overwhelming amount of content with little substance being produced by a minority of the site's users.
I can't track down the article now, but a while back I read a good piece on the site's timeline. In a nutshell it said that their engineering team built the product in such a way to make the timeline frictionless, that is to make it more socially acceptable to generate more posts, which would mean more likes, which would mean more addiction to the product. The problem became that most of the site's posts were no longer engaging, the timeline became an enormous stream of pretty-much substance-less posts, and if you did try to post something with substance it'd likely just get lost in the pile, making users even less likely to use the product. Later Facebook tried to promote posts with comments on them, but it was too little too late as the popularity of the platform continues to decline among young people. Couple that with their image problems in the press, and you have a double hit.
That's pretty much how I experience the site now. Great for notifying my family and friends of major life events - wedding, kids, job changes etc. But when I think of making an every-day post I have to wonder.. why bother.
This thread is meant to house general Facebook discussion. What do you think of it now? Do you agree with the above assessment? Do you find it useful at all?
Shocking numbers, but I'm not too surprised. As time goes by the platform seems more hollowed out and vacuous. The overwhelming number of my good friends, and people I'd enjoy public conversation with, don't use it at all. And what's left is an overwhelming amount of content with little substance being produced by a minority of the site's users.
I can't track down the article now, but a while back I read a good piece on the site's timeline. In a nutshell it said that their engineering team built the product in such a way to make the timeline frictionless, that is to make it more socially acceptable to generate more posts, which would mean more likes, which would mean more addiction to the product. The problem became that most of the site's posts were no longer engaging, the timeline became an enormous stream of pretty-much substance-less posts, and if you did try to post something with substance it'd likely just get lost in the pile, making users even less likely to use the product. Later Facebook tried to promote posts with comments on them, but it was too little too late as the popularity of the platform continues to decline among young people. Couple that with their image problems in the press, and you have a double hit.
That's pretty much how I experience the site now. Great for notifying my family and friends of major life events - wedding, kids, job changes etc. But when I think of making an every-day post I have to wonder.. why bother.
This thread is meant to house general Facebook discussion. What do you think of it now? Do you agree with the above assessment? Do you find it useful at all?
