This only happens in Facebook because everyone in my social circle is on Facebook though. Young people aren’t faced with this platform lock in and I absolutely agree with you, why would they ever join?

Facebook is basically the yellow pages at this point, and how many millennials ever used a phone book?

It was surprisingly easy to forget about facebook. I had already basically avoided it for a month or two. The twitter icon was my reminder/mindless app to kill a few minutes. Twitter sucks too, but its different.

I'll check my facebook when I remember, maybe once a week when my wife mentions a friend posted something crazy on facebook. I'll check my notifications for events, but its mostly garbage.

My tech-spider-sense says the masses are losing interest in facebook.

Personally, Twitter makes me feel gross. Too much marketing spam in a small amount of time. Too easy to get sucked in and lose 30 minutes of my life to informationless noise.

In a past age I was a true believer in reddit, up until 2010-2011. I had a >6-year old account. True believer, paid for gold, believed that to be something special. Reddit ruined that and went for a different, shallower audience. Turns out, that audience is also me.

Not that it would change anything. Being on facebook means that people think they can invite me there, when in reality, I won't see anything until weeks or months later.

I ask because open invite eventing sucks. (I imagine organizing friends only events do too, but I wouldn't know, because we empty nesters no longer socialize like that.)

My primary volunteer gig has been experimenting with using both facebook and meetup to publish meetings, GOTV (phone banking, signature gathering), important calendar dates (eg elections).

Both kinda suck. Most of our members still get looped in via our email blasts.

But I don't really know what would be better. Looking for ideas.

(I do have ideas. But hoping to avoid making my own solution.)

It's much much easier than having to find out someone's email or phone number that you might not have.

And while I haven't organized a large open event, I do enjoy using facebook for attending them.

PaperlessPost is a events company and we recently launched a product named "Flyer". It's an easy way to create an event and collect RSVP's using a unique URL. The designs are pretty hip too. Check it out here - https://www.paperlesspost.com/flyer

Hit me up with any questions about the product.

To better illustrate my challenge, here's an umbrella org to dozens of activities, of varying sizes and prerequisites.

http://www.sustainableballard.org

They need a whitelabel version of volunteermatch.org & meetup.com hybrid.

Personally I hear about the things I want to attend anyway, but I have the same feeling of not knowing nonetheless.

That could be a killer app if Facebook gives it love.

If one of my friend groups introduced a new platform, I’d have that one + Facebook. If five of my friends introduced new platforms I’d probably have 6 platforms.

Aside from that, a lot of the alternative platforms aren’t really better than Facebook. I’m on discord for instance, but they also make a living of my personal data.

I have seen a large part of my Facebook friends leave the platform (I'd estimate at least half are inactive). And our whole class joined when Stanford came onboard as the second school after Harvard way way way long ago.

Also using mobile Chrome in desktop mode enables one to read messages, although it's quite awkward to use.

Facebook's push to force end users to install their messenger on mobile phones made me very suspicious. I stopped using all their regular mobile clients as well, and only use browser.

They also wanted me to fill in profile information- which I didn't do. So they took guesses- all wrong- about my education, by job, and so on. I guess they expected that if I saw something wrong I would fix it. Nope.

I open a private session on mobile safari, log into fbook, then “request desktop site” and read/reply. I refuse to have fbook app installed on my phone.

However I stupidly use WhatsApp everyday...

Not sure if it's on by default, but mine was turned on and I don't remember turning it on.

I think we need to give credit to Facebook where credit is due, and it sure seems like Facebook's management wanted WhatsApp to be private for some reason.

I see no indication that WhatsApp was "private" in any way before Facebook acquired it.

I can't imagine how the Whatsapp acquisition will ever pay off. It doesn't need to because they make money with FB and Instagram but I don't see why they had to buy it..

But I doubt it and I'm sure you're wrong about what runs Messenger. No company, least of all the Facebook scale ones use just one language for everything.

https://www.quora.com/When-did-Facebook-switch-away-from-usi...

sigh

Wait what? I thought that's obvious. Facebook and WhatsApp don't even have the same type of social graph, multi-brand approaches are probably always strategically superior and changing the fundamental concept behind high-growth apps tends to be a high-risk endeavor.

There are probably a million more reasons not to prematurely integrate. (I guess they would also need to quit their e2e encryption in the process.)

Would there be any benefit beside convenience? Honest question.

that AB testing has SUCKED when it comes to facebook enjoyment.

Im not sure if they were looking at minutes people spent on facebook, but that must be an awful indicator.

Whatever happened, I dont use it anymore.

As a teen, I'd go to the movies with my friends maybe 4 times a year. Never went to any events. The extent of our fun was playing basketball or just sitting around.

But they all plan their dances and workshops meticulously in Facebook.

I can mark dances as "interesting" months before they happen and look up later what's coming next week.

That's especially nice for other scenes than your own, in towns two hours or more away.

It's the only thing keeping me on Facebook, because I don't see how to replace that.

Is this popular with American Teens?

I am guessing not. Which kind of makes the GP's point.

And at that point, yes, they start to do everything on Facebook.

It's not so much all-important, but it's the one feature that impacts Facebook-abstainers the most. If someone's planning a party and is lazily using FB events, you'll probably be left out if you don't have an account.

Similarly, my daughter's GirlScouts troop uses FB exclusively for organizing/announcements/voting, etc.

But I love nothing more than dancing the night away with great music. I'm a raver. Facebook Events is a game changer.

When I started going to raves you got a phone call from a guy who heard from a guy that there was a layby off a remote B-road that you might want to be at and when you got there another guy would give you directions along an unnamed road to an abandoned airfield and that was where the rave was.

Now we got corporate raves on a public website. The old way was better.

I also have to imagine that sometimes you just want to dance and it's probably nice to not have to jump through a lot of hoops to find a fun party.

This may be more of a 20+ use case, but either way, Facebook groups provide a sense of community. They are more personal than subreddits and less personal than a group chat.

The 30+ crowd appears to believe that FaceBook is the most logical way to organize events - you can check in on your own schedule, without feeling pressured into immediately responding to someone poking you about joining up. Today's youth has no problem being expected to respond within minutes - or in the worst case, a couple of hours - to an inquiry made via SMS or Snapchat.

ie: Older person: "I may have some free time this weekend, maybe I'll check FaceBook tomorrow to see if anyone is planning something"; vs. younger generation: "Someone snapped our group telling us to come out with them Saturday, I'll decide in the next 5 minutes whether I'm in or out".

In reality FB events are extensively used by ages 16-30 as well for bigger group gatherings, such as going on holiday, going for a weekend somewhere, or something like that.

Your anecdote look like something an older person would charicaturize about youth and elderly.

I don't understand why you'd use FB events for "going on holiday, going for a weekend somewhere." Those things would entail a smaller, tighter knit group with much more communication and planning. Group chat seems like a better fit.

IMO, FB events are really only suitable for things like parties, with an large invite/smaller rsvp dynamic, with mostly broadcast messages from the host.

Yes groupchat is better when it's less than say, 8 people.

FB events are suitable for lots of things, I woulnd't say it in such a reductionary manner like "only parties".

So, what has replaced instant messaging _in a meaningful way_ for teenagers? I hear Snapchat, but I don't think that it's actually filling the gap. I've heard folks say YikYak before, or whatever the fuck it was called, but that app was a pile and I'm pretty sure it died anyway over privacy violations.

What's out there that is directly connecting teens online today? Please tell me they're not all walled in to Facebook without any alternatives...

Maybe I'm nostalgic, maybe I'm stuck viewing "my" technologies through rose-tinted goggles. Maybe I'm just naive. Maybe I'm just old. It may be that "the kids" are just in to a way of communication that doesn't "feel" right to me and that I'll never understand, and which leads itself to apps like Snapchat, WhatsApp, etc... being _genuinely_ superior to what I once experienced, even when I personally view them as being woefully inadequate compared to something as simple as AIM.

It strikes me as being some sort of Socratic expression that I don't want to delve in to. I just hope that technology is serving "kids" today as well as it served me in the past, and I guess that I have to accept that what _they_ accept is performing that job satisfactorily. Maybe when I have children and they are pre-teen / teen then I will be able to understand their needs again.

My eldest is about to turn 15, and he and his mates use IRC. He's a wee bit geeky, so "retro", "techie", and "obscure/mainstream unpopular" appeal greatly.

Kinda funny 'cause dad is mostly on Slack/Telegram/WhatsApp these days. To the extent I use IRC at all it is on the channel he set up for the fam.

> I just hope that technology is serving "kids" today as well as it served me in the past

Amen.

Ah. Maybe it is specifically for teen. Because every time I scroll down there I instantly regret it. Not only the content of comments have no added value, but it's not funny, or even most of the time remotely intelligible.

And I say that why understanding the appeal of the content in video games forum, which on my personal quality scale is already very low.

It's even worse than Youtube comments because it shows that people post the same shit under their real name that their friends/fam can see. They aren't people you know.

I spent some considerable time the other day reporting racist and hateful comments on a single YouTube video. It's not something I would normally spend any time doing but in this instance it was time well spent.

I've limited my exposure to comment sections on websites to HN only. It's the only place I've found that is reliable to not be full of hate and well moderated. I only watch YouTube videos through DDG these days.

People talk about deleting their FB account all the time, but would keep there insta. Facebook, the parent company, is far from losing out.

It’s a weaker position for Facebook though. Instagram is much more vulnerable to competition from Twitter, Snapchat, and YouTube than Facebook is.

Facebook is super defensible. No other company has a network like that. If interest shifts from fb to ig then Facebook’s moat is a lot smaller.

iMessage, SMS is ruling the day now. It’s incredible how utterly Google failed in this space by tossing Talk.

I'm not arguing that I think a system should or should not be open, just that I don't understand how the argument that was presented is supposed to work.

The major open ones (mail and POTS) are either going away as telcos divest and people stop answering the phone or consolidating into a small number of big players as what we see with email.

The 2030s will probably bring back the future equivalent of Telex

Can you do chat-groups on iMessage? Because that's one of the main advantages of using FB Messenger or WhatsApp around these parts of the world (Eastern Europe).

So it was better to use wifi and WhatsApp to communicate. Once you'd fixed your net access, you could be sure of cheap easy text communications.

The EU roaming pricing law has now fixed the original cause, but it is too late to change people's behaviour.

Here we also have unlimited texting in all but the most limited pay-as-you-go offerings. The telco market is extremely competitive.

[1] https://www.similarweb.com/blog/mobile-messaging-app-map-201...

:thinking_face:

Facebook offers an event planner, a blog platform, photo hosting, video hosting, news aggregation, venmo-like payment system, de-facto single sign on service for most websites

That's in addition to Messenger, which as you said is huge.

I suppose photo sharing is integrated in messenger (the mobile app), too?

Edit:

I also hear a lot that most people are on FB due to keeping up with "events" as well. Aside from memories / connecting and events it provides no value back to me. I can call / text / email anyone I know, I guess it's just convenience.

Truer words were never spoken. Granted, I still love to use Facebook because I have friends from years ago, all over the country. It's the only way I keep in touch with them. But as another commenter brilliantly put it, they're becoming the yellow pages.

At what age is it supposed to become the other way round?

Noone - whatever their age - cares about toothbrush companies. It was a very contrived example, that's my point

Exactly. The following is emblematic of what makes YouTube great, which is precisely what YouTube the company and its corporate advertiser don't understand. In fact, it's what they try to kill, and what ideologue shills like Vox and Vice wish they were.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj7Aa866ERY

tl;dw: Actual people being themselves having actual human reactions.