I was looking through it, and it started scrolling on its own. Dozens and dozens of stories flashed before me.
Something is really odd, FB has lost a fair bit of my online time recently.
I think you may be right. Just let me pay a few bucks and just show me my friends.
Scrolling through Facebook is like walking through an Outlet Mall in a foreign country.
Which is understandable, because FB optimizes for clickability and shows very few posts of those who rarely post (and whose posts really deserve attention imo) so after seeing no reaction from their friends ("are they ignoring me?" - no, FB just decided not to include your post in their feeds) they just gave up.
facebook is an ad business. to that end, they do try to improve the user experience wherever necessary to advance the goals stated above, but that's it.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook...
Well, people believe the craziest things so you are in good company.
But on the important point on whether facebook is salvageable with a user subscription model: extremely dubious. In some sense adtech has ruined the concept of users paying for a good product and there is poetic justice in that. The magic wand that turns users into product wont turn product into client.
What might work is "social as public or semi-public infrastructure", namely getting cities, companies, states or even countries paying for user accounts of residents, employees etc. as a sort of benefit.
But even in the unlikely scenario facebook would relinquish its residual adtech earnings in favor of a new and less lucrative business model it would likely face stiff competition from newcomers with less historical baggage
So it seems my company is doing that (it's called "workplace from meta" now) and it's ridiculous as you get the worst of both worlds.
I assume people who say that haven’t had a good experience with fb, but it changed my life when I was younger. I still use to track all my friends across the world.
> In some sense adtech has ruined the concept of users paying for a good product and there is poetic justice in that
Twitter blue
In short, the newsfeed succeeded in making me always feel left out. Checking it several times every day was never good enough.
Subscriptions work when either the user makes money from pushing the content, or actively wants the content they’re provided. On the former, boosted spam has already been implemented, ultra targeted ads are another form of this, and stalking users to push private messages to them is already Linkedin’s bread and butter.
On the latter, the issue is of course that the “content” (people’s post) isn’t and won’t be worth paying for in general. I won’t be paying to read my relatives bickering about stupid issues. Random people’s funny takes and viral jokes will be spread on other networks so paying for it won’t make sense either. I’ll subscribe to my favorite novel, manga or tv show, or check a well put newsletter or podcast. None of that has a place on the blue app.
Facebook at this point has a very specific niche, and trying to get out of that niche either puts it in competition with better/less toxic/griftier services, or canibalizes other meta products. In that sense pushing facebook in a completely new direction is a tall order. If a PM had a crazy novel idea, they’d better execute it in Instagram or a completely new product than have it get beaten to death in facebook.
> haters
I was following a bunch of very talented and idea prolific designers and engineers working at facebook. IMO they haven’t left HN or Twitter or the public place. They left facebook instead.
Another meta problem is that there seem to be no authoritative product person that can force his/her vision on the product so you get hundreds of visions colliding and fighting for changes. IMO it’s much more valuable to have a coherent vision being enforced for the product, otherwise you get this frankenstein-like collection of apps.
Finally, the fact that HN is such a hater of facebook means that most fb engineers have deserted HN and they’re not reading the excellent ideas and feedback that this community sometimes provide. It’s a shame, because I still completely believe in Facebook as a good product for the world.