Re:Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results
by amoorthy on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @06:59PM
(#14312501)
Agree and upvoted. That said, sweeping statements can be useful if they point to a trend. In mature markets, there does appear to be a segment that is turned off by FB and it's not clear if these are being replaced by newer users. If that pattern repeats in newer markets then as the user base ages it portends to trouble for FB.
I'll give you one data point. When I was in college, we had a Facebook group for every single class and they were extremely valuable. We also used Facebook events heavily for various on-campus events. This too was extremely valuable. Now that I'm out of college, I have less affinity with those products from Facebook but I gravitate towards different parts of the site now.
Either way, you can say that your life would not materially change for the better or worse if Facebook fell off the face of the internet tomorrow. That's a valid opinion to hold. But don't make the folly of generalizing a global product that is so incredibly pervasive in ways that we can't fully understand. I'm not saying that this reality is a good thing, nor am I saying it's a bad thing. However we can have better conversations about the effect Facebook has than "Facebook is useless", "Zuck is a spy", "I deleted my account, fuck FB", "All their metrics are fake", "Something something Myspace".
Those simply aren't interesting statements anymore. They just aren't. They're tired and have been repeated year after year for more than a decade.