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Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by 734786710934 on Monday March 26, 2018 @07:22PM (#16683635)
Facebook has no serious competition at the moment other than Snapchat. Young people are still using Instagram and Messenger. Ironically, the calls for regulation might actually end up helping Facebook in the end as they will make the barriers to entry higher.
Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by tilertex on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @04:38AM (#16686465)
There's a reason Mark Zuckerberg himself came out and said he's "actually not sure we shouldn't be regulated" and it's not because he has genuine concerns about his users privacy.

It's because regulation increases the barrier to entry. It means less chance of some college students starting an app that can dethrone Facebook.

Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by cies on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @07:21AM (#16687215)
> and it's not because he has genuine concerns about his users privacy.

yups. FB users are to FB, what cows are to milk farms. main difference is that FB users are free to go, and cows are in some sort of bonded labour/slavery construction, although it is not commonly called that way.

Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by gldalmaso on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @07:37AM (#16687316)
At least in Brazil I think there is serious competition in the form of WhatsApp. It allows plenty of the things that FB initially brought to the table in the form of family, friend and work groups where people actually share their personal stuff now, while in FB people just mostly show off some generic things and share news articles in their bubble. I would say WhatsApp right now is a lot more social than FB is. When you meet someone new you ask them for their WhatsApp number, not to add them to FB.

Sure FB owns WhatsApp but I don't think they can leverage it financially nearly as much. If ads start to pop up on WhatsApp people will simply flock to different messengers with similar functionality.

Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by ascorbic on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @03:57PM (#16692178)
Whether or not a WhatsApp user is more valuable to them than a FB one, there's no way you can call it serious competition if they own it.
Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by JDWolf on Monday March 26, 2018 @09:17PM (#16684317)
MS LinkedIn seems like a pretty strong competitor to me. Seems like their logo/like buttons/messaging/user experience is converging that direction. Perhaps they will offer Office-Ville or Kanban-Crush-Saga.
Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by wlesieutre on Monday March 26, 2018 @09:23PM (#16684340)
Contrary opinion, I hate LinkedIn's site and even though I'm connected to some colleagues and industry people on there I avoid using it as much as possible.

Some of this dates back to their repeatedly inventing new excuses to email me that I had to go and unsubscribe from, part is that I can't look at anyone's page without LinkedIn telling them about it, part is their finagling everyone signing up to give access to their Gmail contacts similar to Facebook's harvesting of user info.

I guess they're a competitor, but if they're not as bad as Facebook is it's only because they have less reach.

Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by mygo on Monday March 26, 2018 @11:54PM (#16685093)
LinkedIn is not a competitor to Facebook. Why? Context. When you go on facebook you’re in a social state of mind. When you go on LinkedIn you’re in a formal / business state of mind. It’s a glorified resume and socially conservative af. That fact alone means that, even if LinkedIn has the same exact user base as facebook, we are not going to use LinkedIn like we do facebook.

Facebook profits off of our attention and engagement. Facebook’s real competition is who or whatever holds our attention. Whoever manages to make us give facebook less of our time. LinkedIn does not really have our attention like facebook does. We set up a profile and leave and maybe get on it when job hunting or when someone writes us a recommendation. There is no “LinkedIn addiction.” But you wanna know what website has been getting even more and more of our attention? Netflix lol. Netflix can take hours out of our day and during those hours we may be so absorbed in the show that we’re not really engaging with facebook. So yeah, Netflix is a bigger competitor to facebook than LinkedIn.

Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by FullyFunctional on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @01:02AM (#16685400)
So, HN then? (I'm only half-kidding. I have an unhealthy addiction to HN)
Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by mygo on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @02:12PM (#16691214)
I deleted my facebook and use HN more. So technically yes, at least for me. I wonder how many other people who frequent HN have either done away completely with facebook or give it less attention than a control group
Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by Roybot on Monday March 26, 2018 @11:12PM (#16684889)
When social media platforms are optimizing for user engagement, it's not surprising that you're seeing the same features. With enough A/B testing they all discover the same thing and end up on the same path. The FB feed has become a bunch of memes/videos, increasing engagement. It won't be surprising once the LinkedIn feed becomes saturated with videos as well. I don't see LinkedIn as a strict competitor to FB. They're both social platforms but different.
Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by narrator on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @05:56AM (#16686819)
When resentment builds against an entrenched company, and a good alternative comes along, the shift can be pretty rapid. The Quark-X-press to Adobe InDesign exodus was particularly fast.
Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by gaius on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @12:26AM (#16685234)
Facebook has no serious competition at the moment

The competition is “socialising the pre-Facebook way”

Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by someoneelse987 on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @02:17AM (#16685771)
To me what changed with Facebook was that the local address book that I had on my phone became a tree in a central graph owned by a company and I was fine giving out that information. Today who could muster up the trust needed for me to let them know about everyone I know? I think no such company exists or ever will.

I have no social internet accounts left except for this one. I even recently deleted my Linkedin account even though that is bad for my career (?). I just don't want to feel raped all the time. I keep getting Linkedin-ish head-hunting emails though but I'm sure that'll clear up in a year or so.

If I'm ever socializing again on the internet, give me something that doesn't rape me in the *. Otherwise I'm fine just socializing IRL.

I hope we are a void and that something new is about to happen.

Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by robin_reala on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @09:06AM (#16687889)
I’ve never had a LinkedIn account (and have got myself into some sort of internal blacklist) and I’ve never felt disadvantaged career-wise or even been asked if I have an account.
Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by therein on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @04:59AM (#16686567)
Let me download MSN Messenger. I remember there was a J2ME client for my Nokia 3650.
Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by znpy on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @06:12AM (#16686893)
I honestly miss MSN Messenger. Fond memories.
Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by matte_black on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @08:02AM (#16687460)
Maybe even the return of AIM.
Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by vor0nwe on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @08:35AM (#16687661)
ICQ still exists, doesn’t it?
Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by jlebrech on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @07:49AM (#16687397)
It would be a good time for microsoft to re-release MSN Messenger.
Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by benbristow on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @11:47AM (#16689611)
They have. It's called Skype
Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by jlebrech on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @11:55AM (#16689708)
and it really sucks. just wipe the slate clean with the user base and an msn message relaunch would be very popular.
Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by billysielu on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @04:39AM (#16686476)
Not socializing so much is also valid.
Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by chrischen on Monday March 26, 2018 @07:24PM (#16683653)
Instagram is a completely different app, usage, and completely different UI/UX from Facebook.

Facebook's problems are caused by Facebook (website)'s design, trajectory, and business model. It doesn't have anything to do with inherent evilness in the company itself.

Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by socialist_coder on Monday March 26, 2018 @09:51PM (#16684468)
I'm replying to the dead comment.

The Facebook site is evil and should be destroyed because of 2 reasons, in my opinion.

Firstly, the news feed is solely designed to get you to stay on the site for longer. And what that means is you get an echo chamber. So, idiot people get idiot posts that agree with them. It's not just a problem on one side of the political spectrum, it's a problem for any extreme view. Anti-vaxxers, left wing communists, and right wing fascists all get into their echo chamber and never get out.

Secondly, the advertising platform that Facebook has created is too powerful. It lets you micro-target people in a way that is absolutely perfect for political ads. You find people vulnerable to an emotional message and bombard them with your emotionally responsive ads.

Facebook ads are good for non-political things as well, but in this case, we'll have to throw the baby out with the bathwater I think.

Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by MarkMc on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @01:39AM (#16685573)
Do we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater? We can have regulation that bans the use personal information for political ads but allows it for toothpaste ads
Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by socialist_coder on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @10:25AM (#16688670)
I hope so. My concern is that it is hard to define what a political ad is sometimes. For example, if you have an ad that claims that some specific ethnic group gets food stamps more than another, is that a political ad? Because those are the kinds of ads that Russia was buying.
Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by willvarfar on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @05:24AM (#16686674)
Instagram and Facebook share data; they are two interfaces to the same big pot of profiling data

https://help.instagram.com/833836199971426

Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by oneeyedpigeon on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @08:37AM (#16687666)
> Ironically, the calls for regulation might actually end up helping Facebook in the end as they will make the barriers to entry higher.

The barrier will only be higher for potential services that want to avoid those regulations. If the market moves in a 'wants more privacy' direction, barrier to entry shouldn't be a problem.

Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by MarkMc on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @01:34AM (#16685553)
If people were to switch from using Facebook to Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp it would be hugely destructive to Facebook's market cap.
Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar... by pnutjam on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @06:21AM (#16686926)
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