While it's an interesting article, I think he's being a bit hyperbolic in translating his local experience out to a generalization.
This isn't simply a 19 year olds experience. It is a white, suburban, middle-class, male attending a conservative university in a culturally regressive state. If nothing else, he's about as radically distant from an urban minority as you could get to the point where I'd imagine it is really impossible for him to have any perspective into other demographics and how they use these tools. I value his opinion, but it's important to take it into context.
Atleast he attempts to hedge his lack of experience in his opening statement.
I'm going to argue that. Many of these services are targeting a more diverse crowd. If they were only targeting this kids demographic, they would be limiting their growth potential out the door. Especially given that the growing base of users of these tools are international users.
Also, I'm going to argue just against my experience with urban teens living in more diverse communities which doesn't really align with this kids experience.
Agree in principle, disagree in execution. Pretty much any app maker (whatsapp aside) starts with a skewed market: people with smartphones. iOS makers even moreso. These people trend toward being white and middle/upper class. Now you need to narrow to who buys shit on their phones. Again that demographic skews younger. [1] [2]
So right away, if you want a successful smartphone app in the U.S. then you need to target, urban white men between 18-29 with at least some college and 75000+ a year in income.
I think as you say more people should target international etc... but people build toward the problems they have and the language they know. Whatsapp is killing it because they broke out of the mold. So yes, they should for many reasons, but if you just follow the money then who you target looks very homogenous.
What you say makes sense when you're selling a product. With most of these applications, their potential money making product though is the back-office data they collect on the users themselves which they then sell to brokers or data warehousing services, or provide to targeting advertisement firms. From that stand point you simply want the largest installed user base you can get.
A successful smart phone app based on these metrics is the one with the largest user base. You get that user base by providing a simple to use product that quickly addresses a need for the largest number of people, rich, poor, white, black, etc...
Now, if you're talking about targeted applications like certain types of gaming apps. Or apps that provide an extended retail experience? This is when you talk about focused demographics.
You get that user base by providing a simple to use product that quickly addresses a need for the largest number of people, rich, poor, white, black, etc...
Totally agree here.
A successful smart phone app based on these metrics is the one with the largest user base.
This is where we diverge. An app is only as successful as what it can make money from. Having a billion people use something and they don't generate revenue from it is worthless in the long run - bloated investments not withstanding.
A reliable proven to be profitable user base is what consistently makes money - the facebooks etc... are extreme outliers that got lucky with monetization after growing the userbase are not really cases to be emulated.
I'm not sure of what the divergence you're indicating is. I agree that an app with no monitization is worthless for sure. A bloated app user base where you aren't monetizing your users is a money sink.
Granted there are other cases of revenue models that we may not even be aware of that are in play. For instance Twitter initially was making money off SMS bulk transactions. They would buy SMS network blocks in volume and sale broadcasting blocks to marketers at a markup which was lower than outbound texting rates. There was good money in the margins here for a time. They don't like to talk about it publicly but they still admit that the service was built around a focus on SMS... https://blog.twitter.com/2010/introducing-fast-follow-and-ot...
This is why for a while they also tried like hell to push people to take Tweets over SMS instead of having pulling them from the web via a web browser or other web based client. Smartphones unexpectedly gimped this business model for them.
>Which is the demographic that all of the services in question care about (except whatsapp) - which kind of proves the point.
Hahaha, no way that is true man.
Also, bcRIPster, I believe your comments provide a valuable POV, that thing about the demographics, it hadn't ocurred to me. Thanks for posting and don't take the witch-hunt personal, remember that karma is given for people that spend all their time here, they don't reflect the holder's knowledge or politeness. Most of the downvotes here are just another way of saying "I don't like what you say but I'm uncapable of coming with an intelligent response on to why I don't agree with your opinion, hence I'll just downvote you (and absolutely everything else you post afterwards)".
Thank-you... beyond that I just learned from another user that even though I've been using this site for years I have never seen a down vote option, so I always suspected it was a mod activity. Now that I know it's just other users doing it I don't feel so bad. Thanks for the kind words :)
Ok mods, I'm concerned that I have made some valid criticisms on this article as have others in their comments, yet mine is being down modded into negatives.
I'm left feeling this is immature and punitive for a joke I made on a prior news posting where I complained about the down modding.
Would someone like to explain just how my criticism is so much more severe as to warrant attack over the other criticisms?
I think that the downvotes have nothing to do with the joke you mention. Your comment doesn't add any value to the discussion, we are aware of the things you highlight.
Good! Good! Then I wholly expect to see every comment that is stating an obvious concept to now be down modded off of this site. That's really healthy for discussion.
You understand that users are the ones downvoting you, as a relatively inactive user you don't have a downvote button but many of us do and don't like complaints (about downvotes) or broad generalizations ("culturally regressive") that don't add to the discussion.
I was with you until you started attacking an entire ethnicity.
> attending a conservative university in a culturally regressive state
I didn't downvote you, but I feel like I could have without any guilt. Have you been to Austin? Or any urban center in Texas? They are probably more conservative than Berkeley, but they're definitely blue areas. Especially Austin. I mean, Houston's mayor is a lesbian! See if you can pick out Dallas, Austin, and Houston on this map:
And substance aside, terms like "culturally regressive" are unnecessary and inflammatory. And your post has an overall dismissive attitude of someone who is just expressing himself. He makes it extremely clear that it's just his opinion.
So maybe there is a downvote brigade, but I'm not in it. And they're redundant if you ask me.
No. Honestly I haven't been to Austin and I have heard good things about it but I did spend a few years living in the DFW Metroplex area (Arlington and then later in Plano). I have on the other hand have had bad personal experiences with UT graduates being rather full of themselves clueless about the real world. As well as white middle-class 19 year olds thinking they're social media experts because they posted a blog post.
Texas in general has always left a bad taste in my mind and their political and religious exports don't do much to change my opinion.
I always love how Austin get's thrown out as some amazing counter to excuse the rest of the state.
>As well as white middle-class 19 year olds thinking they're social media experts because they posted a blog post.
From the article:
>That being said, I'm not an expert at this by a long shot and I'm sure there will be data that disproves some of the points I make, but this is just what I've noticed.
All that proves is that his Journalism instructor told him to be sure to include boilerplate CYA to deflect criticism of his article. If he really felt this way he wouldn't be so declarative of his opinions.
I imagine Texas is a lot like Oregon. Super Blue in the cities, and super Red when you drive out. But really it's hard to characterize an entire state, especially the 2nd most populated one in the U.S.
I don't know. Every Texan I've ever known likes to name drop Austin to defend their state to the point where it's like saying they've got a black friend so they can't be racists. Or, they let a gay guy hug them so they're not homophobic.
At some point it starts to make you cross-eyed :P
I'm sorry, I'm know I'm poking this subject with a stick. I hope everyone understands the satire and frustration of my statement.
This is filled with gems that old farts like me (I'm 30) don't have any idea about.
If I don’t get any likes on my Instagram photo or Facebook post within 15 minutes you can sure bet I'll delete it.
Super interesting take - it's as though they are posting not to show people stuff but to get people's approval for what they are posting. Simple but critically different in my opinion.
Facebook is often used by us mainly for its group functionality.
Got it, so make a better group service and bring everyone to that.
One big thing I took away is that, assuming this is representative of the demographic, they seem to not mind using multiple applications for communications. So there really is the ability to pretty narrowly specialize with functions - something I think the older generation does backwards; we want to consolidate and make services a "one stop shop."
GroupMe was awesome when group SMS was shit but it's gotten much better and since everyone is one FB chat that's used more in my circle of friends. I have a few GroupMe conversations but a number have moved to FB Chat and the ones left are just a few holdouts.
Most plans have lots of texts but we needed international, which is an additional fee per month. Cut some off the phone bill and still can text because of it.
Unless you meant they start using it with people other than you...
Please forgive me, I'm not saying no one used WhatsApp but that people in my age group, with similar socioeconomic status, that I regularly hang out with and talk to don't use it. WhatsApp is great for overseas talk and its ability to run on literally any phone but the vast majority of my friends have iPhones and the ones that don't have higher-end android phones so WhatsApp was never the "only" option for us and we gravitated to other networks.
Also understand that I am FULLY aware that I do not represent my age group nor do I represent even the "average" "young" person. I represent a small demographic but I wanted to give my views from that position.
A phone like the Nokia 215 is made for non-Western, non-first world audiences. With those audiences, WhatsApp is a bit deal. When it comes to US or other Western college campuses, maybe not so much.
I'm just saying, just because people with dumbphones or feature phones are clamoring for WhatsApp doesn't mean that people with smartphones care at all about the service.
Here in europe it is widely used. There might be some difference between what americans use and what europeans use. (She says that kind of in the article)
Whatsapp is the primary messaging app for many of my teenage cousins. Most have it as the default message app and is a permanent fixture on their phone home screens and rarely use SMS anymore.
I don't know anyone working in tech that uses facebook. That would be like being an obese fitness instructor, your actions and your knowledge would be at constant conflict. Only explanation would be that these people are either lying or insane (psycho-/sociopath).
While I agree that facebook is frequently used for events, I'd actually argue that it's horrible for events, there's just no other option.
For any given event, about 2/3 of the people will never respond to the invite, of the people who did respond it's a complete tossup who will show up, the stupid "maybe" answer which is essentially the same as not responding at all because it means "almost definitely not, but I technically could show up since I marked maybe". People often invite all their friends which includes everyone they have ever met, people that don't even live in the area or that they are close with anymore. Facebook gives you no intelligence whatsoever on the events, like "here are people you always invite" or "here are people you always invite but who never respond" etc, which would be easy to show and very helpful. There is no way to update people coming to the event on changes or anything other than posting on the event's wall, which most people will not be notified of unless they check facebook all the time, etc. etc. I could go on for so long about how shitty facebook events are, and it truly makes me sad, because really the purpose of these events is just to meet up with and have fun with friends, but the process is so frustrating I feel like it actually prevents this from happening in a lot of cases.
On that note, I am also very passively plotting out working on a better version, so if anyone is reading this and is also frustrated by facebook's crap events feel free to get in touch, hah.
> On that note, I am also very passively plotting out working on a better version, so if anyone is reading this and is also frustrated by facebook's crap events feel free to get in touch, hah.
I'm older than you and I definitely don't want a one stop shop.
Currently I use Facebook to see photos of my extended family, LinkedIn for work & sales, Instagram to keep up with my cooler friends, Twitter to see trending news, StockTwits to see investing ideas...
To me this is the future of social networking: many networks, each with a specialized purpose.
Yes, Facebook tries to be everything to everyone. It kinda has to, more or less, for the sheer number of users.
Nilay Patel recently argued that Facebook is the new AOL, it's the portal of the 2010s. I think that is an apt description. I am using it yet also kind of just pining to drop it.
I also use it for groups and messaging. Somehow, Facebook groups are great. They're super simple, and they just work. The newsfeed on the other hand is completely broken.
Not OP, but no. I would never use an aggregator. I really don't want to view any of those services at the same time. They are all very different and require viewing at different times/different states of mind.
Not saying this is what people would want, but what if the aggregator shaped itself depending on what the person was doing, where they were, time of day, etc?
>> If I don’t get any likes on my Instagram photo or Facebook post within 15 minutes you can sure bet I'll delete it.
> Super interesting take - it's as though they are posting not to show people stuff but to
Just an idea: This is a single individual; basically anecdata. I have a sister who is 44 years old and who does the same thing and has been doing it as long as she's been on the internet (she started by blogging and has deleted hundreds of posts in the same way, in addition to her current FB, Instagram, etc. posts). I do wonder if this could be reduced to psychological typology or self-image though.
it's as though they are posting not to show people stuff but to get people's approval for what they are posting
Yes that's what lives pretty strong in that generation - and on social media in general, I have the impression.
For some that goes really far, maybe too far, and people become unhappy or even depressed if they are not seen/approved by others.
Which is like in real life, but also at the same time not quite: in real life conversations etc you show a lot of yourself because it's impossible to hide. Facial expressions, body language, meeting pople early in the morning when you're not at your best, on one of those days where the whole world is against you, and so on. In virtual life however you try to make sure that side of you doesn't show. You could call it a lie. I'm not sure if that is good, bad or neither.
There's also the awareness of the awareness : You can easily sneak into a conversation between a much older or more mature generation, to gain a different perspective on yourself. Where these conversations were relatively hidden in select circles in the past (the conversations concerning the nuances of socialization) they are commonplace now. Everyone is stuck in their own spiral of self analysis, and they are all aware that they are creating and maintaining this spiral of self analysis. In the past, we might not have been so hyper aware of the act of seeking positive affirmations and social acceptance, although humans as social animals might have instinctively/intuitively/naturally sought it out.
However, I am sure there is some philosopher 200 or 100 years ago that has noticed the same phenomena with a different generational shift of technological and emotive labeling.
I'm 19 years old, and I certainly post for approval. Though at this point, I don't really post anything but humorous anecdotes or one-liners. In the back of my mind I'm telling myself I'm one step closer to becoming a comedian.
But I also leave up posts that don't get as many likes or comments. If I'm posting something, it's because I've spent time working on the material. I think it's good regardless. But I do know acquaintances who will delete comments they don't like and have gone to post a comment on a post only to get a "post no longer exists" message. This is only from experience on Facebook, I don't really tweet that often anymore.
Spot on. I've since forgotten about this, but at that age I do remember caring way too much about being liked and what others thought.
It was not that I was so vain - it just seemed like a reality to me. Reality seemed to be, you have to be cool like these guys / that guy / whoever or else you will never have a girlfriend and never have sex and die alone.
In hindsight, that's stupid, idiotic even. But back then that was my life. And it's still like that for teens now. Explains why I can talk to a teen and they seem like perfectly reasonable people, except 10 minutes later they go off and do something unimaginably stupid.
Maybe it's a sort of random mutation of our social genetic makeup - teens must do stupid, senseless stuff, and some, randomly, discover something great (while lots of others just embarrass or injure themselves).
Well, I'm almost 40, and I similarly feel the inherent disappointment when one of my posts is not liked by my peers. Not achieving a certain number of likes feels like social disapproval, or maybe misunderstanding.
Of course, I grew up with punk rock music, so when that happens, I just say F them and move on with my next un-liked post. (Then, the game is to see how many old friends I can repel)
First of all you have to understand that your post will be shown to very few people initially, and if it doesn't get any likes from these few people - let's say it's 10 - immediately, then it won't be shown to anyone else. One reason the newsfeed sucks, and I believe it's the reason I never see posts from the vast majority of my friends.
And then, to me, the quality of the likes matter.
I recently posted 3 different links that were all about stuff very close to my heart - things I really care about. One was a 40 minute video. It got one like, but that like was from my father - I'd trade that for 100 friends likes.
One was an article I loved; it got one like, but the guy loved it so much he shared it. And this is something - if I have reached one person's heart, it's a huge success.
Another one, forget what that was, but it got likes from my brother and another person close to me.
If a post gets no likes, yeah, first of all, fuck them, and secondly only 10 people saw it thanks to Facebook's clever constant optimization algorithm so F Facebook, too.
Let's be honest, I have 300 friends, the likelihood that all 300 saw a post of mine and did NOT like it is pretty much zero. The only way I can get a post with no likes is if it was only shown to a small percentage of my friends. (or if I posted total crap but I'm not, I swear ;) )
Posting, liking, and commenting are pretty much the only means of interaction on Facebook. (Besides messages, but that's a different thing.) And since there's no "dislike" button, if you get no likes, then you don't know if people really hated it, or thought you were weird for posting it. Removing it is the easiest way to make sure you're not alienating your friends.
I think this type of thinking and the Facebook comments show a larger problem with teens, in that people are posting crap on Facebook more for external validation from everyone to tell themselves they are cool/funny/popular/in the know etc.
I'm 35 and don't post what I'm doing or showing off who I'm with every 30 minutes, and if I occasionally post something and no one comments on it, I don't care and I sure don't delete it out of some kind of embarrassment.
Going to concerts now or looking around in bars everyone is more concerned with telling everyone electronically how cool they are more than anything else and this is the real problem.
Great, another over-30 holding forth on what the "real problem" with teens is. It's really not that different from how people act in person. If you say something in a group conversation and get no reaction, maybe change the subject.
Great, but I'm not so embarrassed and afraid of what others think that I need to remove it from the world less I become embarrassed (and thus less cool).
Young people now are way too concerned at impressing others and that is nothing new, but now they are able to do it 24/7 and it is an issue. They are not living their lives but have their phones shoved in their face every second vs actually interacting with others.
I am enjoying a few resturants etc enforcing a no phone policy, I wish it would become more prevalent in places where you are supposed to socially interact, with actual, real people in front of you.
Yes change the subject. That's "leaving the post up"
If instead you immediately demand that everyone forget that you ever mentioned an uncool or not intensely popular thing, that seems more in line with "deleting the comment"
You don't have to make demands, people naturally forget little things said in conversations. Facebook remembers verbatim, in a searchable format. It even pushes your post into other people's "timelines" so you don't know who sees it or when. It's no wonder people get skittish, when Facebook gives them so little control over their content.
No it's not. That's bringing even attention to it. You example is more similar to deleting an unliked post, and then posting "Everyone please forget my last post. Just pretend it never happened."
Deleting a post from Facebook/Instagram/etc doesn't delete it from the memory of the people who did see it. It just prevents more people from seeing it, or those people from seeing it again. So it's almost exactly like making an unpopular statement in conversation, and then abruptly changing the subject.
"but to get people's approval for what they are posting"
The business reason for multi-billion dollar social media companies is for brands and celebrities to get "likes". The only social sites that don't operate that way, are one dude in his basement sites, not billion dollar sites, where all the useful content is anyway.
Anyway, that business reason is going to rub off on all the participants. IBM isn't going to post everything, they're going to post likable stuff. No surprise IBMs followers have similar habits.
It's not necessarily approval, but trying to start a conversation. If something gets no response after a while, it means nobody wants to talk about it so you might as well delete it.
> "it's as though they are posting not to show people stuff but to get people's approval for what they are posting"
Which is generally how the average westerner has behaved for generations. They don't acquire and desire clothes, music, books, movies, ideas, hair-styles and gadgets solely based on best personal fit. They acquire and desire based -- very heavily -- on the opinions of those tribes they admire.
(And while teenagers and young-adults are far more susceptible to this sort of "fashion", older folks are far from immune to it.)
Facebook is not popular for groups because it does it so well, it's used for grouping because you can safely assume that 98% of your classmates have a Facebook account, know hoe to use it and even check it occasionally.
Most infuriating thing about Facebook is that the group admin tools are just really, really shit. And it's very difficult to admin an active or, God forbid, controversial group without just being a fascist about it. I'm not saying that increasing social drama to increase page views was a design goal, but it does seem to be the result.
>Got it, so make a better group service and bring everyone to that.
You are going to need significant value-add to convince people to bootstrap their identities and social graph all over again. Snapchat did it by piggybacking on "people who have each other's phone numbers." Tumblr did it by not doing it - the social network is deliberately separate, and you have to be much closer to someone for them to tell you their Tumblr URL.
I will never use your service if I have to sign up, confirm my email address, add friends, convince them to sign up and actually check it, etc. Decentralization is the surest way to destroy user experience. Facebook already knows me and everyone I know in real life. Why would I not just use it?
These are mostly phone apps, so to launch the app that wants their attention, they just click the notification. Doesn't matter much at all which app, or where the icon is on their screen, since it's just the one place that launches everything.
> it's as though they are posting not to show people stuff but to get people's approval for what they are posting.
I don't think it's as simple as "please like me/please approve of this" but there's also a component of "Oh, you don't like this -- I won't bother anyone else with it, sorry about that!"
I'm 40. Shocking I know. But to all those who think this is just ancient (the younger they are the older that seems) I have only one response: There's nothing you can do to avoid the same fate! Except a premature death, but that would be even worse, right? Hahaha. Anyway.
I have a 21 year old friend, this is how she's using Facebook:
- Accept all friends requests. There are lots because she's cute.
- Go through the feed relatively often, liking every single post.
- Post stuff, see who likes it. Those friends who don't like her posts are unfriended.
Needless to say, she gets a lot of likes on her posts. It's absurd to do this, of course, but at the same time it's just taking what normal people do, and taking it to its logical extreme.
I am guessing if the Facebook engineers responsible for optimizing the news feed saw this they'd have a heart attack.
For another single data point I asked my 15 year old son a few months back about what social media platforms he uses and was rather surprised to have him answer "Facebook is for old people" - which probably means over 20.
> I only know a handful of people (myself included) that believe Snapchat does delete your photos. Everyone else I know believes that Snapchat has some secret database somewhere with all of your photos on it.
It takes a special kind of stupid to even consider the idea that the photos are _really_ deleted.
Well, then I guess you're calling a majority of the population (including doctors, lawyers, artist, musicians, etc) "stupid".
What you really mean is someone who doesn't understand how technology (and tech companies) work.
This could easily be mitigated if we enforced privacy laws saying that if you tell someone something is deleted, then it must actually be securely deleted. They might even be on the books already, just enforce them.
If something goes online, it stays online. Proxies, long term caches, archives, you name it. Relying on privacy laws of secure deletion would be the same mistake.
Delete buttons should really be labelled as "hide stuff from everybody except us."
First of all, my comment was meant in the context of the article which is the use of technology by _teenagers_, not the general part of the population. And even so, yes people should know better, privacy has a big place in the public debate nowdays.
I like that he's less concerned with a company storing his Social Security Number (or credit card, name, address... things governments/companies ALREADY HAVE) than the photos and thoughts he's choosing to share only with his closest friends.
Dunno how to quote:
I only know a handful of people (myself included) that believe Snapchat does delete your photos. Everyone else I know believes that Snapchat has some secret database somewhere with all of your photos on it. While I will save that debate for another day, it is safe to say that when photos are “leaked” or when there’s controversy about security on the app, we honestly do not really care. We aren't sending pictures of our Social Security Cards here, we're sending selfies and photos with us having 5 chins
* You post you getting ready for the party, going to the party, having fun at the party, the end of the party, and the morning after the party on Snapchat.
* On Facebook you post the cute, posed pictures you took with your friends at the party with a few candids (definitely no alcohol in these photos).
* On Instagram you pick the cutest one of the bunch to post to your network.
What I find interesting is the stark contrast to people's predictions from years ago. I can recall the speculation about how in a world of facebook our lives will be documented forever, and the problems that will cause. That very real concern seems to not only have been well received, but they seem to be taking precautions. Unexpected, but very encouraging!
And just how did you come to that conclusion when he specifically said he doesn't care if someone like Snapchat keeps his photos forever?!? Will he care when his photos start showing up in advertisements? Will he care when a prospective employer with a data sharing agreement with Snapchat's future owner accesses his document/activity history and he can't get a job?
They don't care, because they're operating under the assumption that it's true. According to his account, they're not putting their most private photos there—they assume that anything they post may be made public in the future.
I'm feeling like we read different articles. I never once got that concept that he was somehow protecting his privacy. He just stated that his perceptions were that some sites were more private than others. I get the feeling that his friends are still posting compromising content online, they just don't think they're be accountable for it.
While I will save that debate for another day, it is safe to say that when photos are “leaked” or when there’s controversy about security on the app, we honestly do not really care. We aren't sending pictures of our Social Security Cards here, we're sending selfies and photos with us having 5 chins.
And I'm still not seeing it. All he's done is equated privacy with things like social security numbers. He's also indicated that he's taking privacy statements from these companies at face value. Privacy is way more than that. Him and his friends just haven't been burned yet by mismanaging their online personas.
I'll hazard a guess that the prospective employer (if looking at other potentials in the same demographic) will need to turn a blind eye if they want to hire anyone at all. They'll all have something stupid on there. I'm curious to see what happens when my generation starts running for office.
Given that we've seemed to reach a stage where most US politicians seem to match the profile of what one would clinically call a sociopath, I'm going to hazard a guess that they will not really care.
Feeling old too. I do_not_get the need to post the highlights of your day throughout the day. It reeks of narcissism. I feel sorry for them, in my oldness.
What makes it different from normal narcissism is that it is /mutual/ narcissism. Nobody would post the highlights of their day throughout the day unless there was the potential for others to respond positively to it and give you social gratification.
Disclaimer: 19 y/o who uses only Snapchat, and that perhaps four or five times a week max.
Well, lets put it this way, you never told your group of friends while in school about something cool that happened and would make you look good? Many social media interactions are that type of chatter, nothing more, but over a different medium than speech.
Sure I do that. But not a dozen (actually mundane) things daily, like the teen's "I'm about to go to this cool party". Among my friends we might mention the highlight of the week by email.
I'm a 37 year old Instagram user. I like seeing what my friends and family are up to. Restaurants they've been to and enjoyed, things they've seen, activities with their kids, etc. I reciprocate and it gives me my own history to look back over, which I like too.
The content on Instagram is usually a higher quality. People take time to edit their photos with filters, different brightness/contrast settings, etc. ... This means the content on Instagram is normally “better” (photo-wise)
That's the OP's personal experience of course, mine is sort of the opposite: facebook has all sorts of crappy pictures, instagram has those as well but made even worse by having applied all kinds of filters most of which appeal ugly to me. Tumblr on the other hand I consider as a source for decent/pro material (as in, actually beautiful pictures taken with proper cameras). Maybe all this is because of who I'm following though.
many have nailed this on the head. It’s dead to us.
The next few paragraphs then go on to describe Facebook as essential social plumbing. I think an FB product manager would be delighted to hear that Facebook is "dead" in this way.
This is precisely why the most successful social network of its generation was built, first and foremost, to be a platform rather than a cocktail party.
Not too sure about that. All of my friends (I'm 23) have FB and while we all more or less hate it we wouldn't dream of not being on FB. It's the best way to connect with someone you meet (through friends, at a bar, etc) and you don't have to ask for a number. Just friend request, chat a little bit and if it works out swap numbers and move to SMS.
Like your parent said I see FB as "essential social plumbing", not the most glamorous or best but a necessity and way to connect to people before you go "off FB" to another app or SMS to chat/interact. The only reason I "post" to FB is b/c my Twitter posts to FB. I rarely use Twitter except from trying to get companies attention after having them ignore support requests or not having any other support at all. Multiple times I've used a websites/app's built in ticketing system only to get no response. A pissed tweet a couple days later and I've got a response within the hour... The squeaky wheel...
I am not talking about the future, I'm talking about right now, at this moment. I can't predict the future but I can give my view point from this point in time and that's what I've done. I'm sorry that's not good enough for you.
And just because it's happened in the past does not guarantee that it will happen again. People have been predicting the downfall of Facebook for years, but it keeps growing.
It will, I can think of a ton of services I've used in the past that one day you just stop logging on. You don't even remember the last day of using them, just one day you stop. Then slowly everyone stops. (E.g., AOL, AIM, Geocities, IRC^, MySpace, and most recently Path & Instagram).
I assume the same will happen in my life for Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc. One day I will just stop.
^I use IRC for dev stuff now, but there was a good 5 years where it was no longer a part of my life. I was a gamer who played CS in the early 2000s.
Obviously nothing stays around forever. But there is a big difference between a trendy app that everyone uses for a couple years and then stops, and Facebook, which many people don't use on a daily basis but still keep it around because its usefulness outweighs the effort required to keep your account. I have friends who have deleted their Facebook accounts, only to come back a month later with a very basic account just because they need to keep in touch with some circle of friends that they otherwise wouldn't be able to.
Not at all obvious to the investors who value these companies at tens and hundreds of billions of dollars. They don't expect them to dissapear in 5-10 years
10-16 year olds also live with their parents and often "hate" them. Now that more adults are there, it's not as natural to get on Facebook as a teenager/pre-teen.
Will they join later when they move out and seek ways to stay connected with family? Who knows - but I can definitely see why they're not there yet. I'm older, but the only reason I joined Facebook was to have a way to keep in touch with family once I moved 2000 miles away to California.
What he's saying is that Facebook is a great contacts directory, because everyone is on it. But most of the other features are useless.
(Recently, most of the features of Facebook broke for the combo of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Firefox 34, and Ghostery. Messaging and notifications still work most of the time, but many of the other features just stall, probably waiting for some tracker. This turns out to be a feature, not a bug. No ads, no timeline, no crap.)
> many of the other features just stall, probably waiting for some tracker.
Ubuntu adds a Firefox extension for integrating some web sites into the desktop. It's incredibly buggy and, IME, frequently breaks on Facebook. Try disabling the extension in Firefox.
I think that Facebook's NewsFeed is the biggest mess and the over-algorithmization just killed that product.
People don't want to have fancy algorithms sorting their lives. Rather have people decide what they want to see.
They aren't geeks like we are. I'm usually delighted when I see heat map and sorting alg based on heatmaps and heavy machine learning. But these kids? They don't care that you have there 2k developers sitting and optimizing news feed. Once you have there an ad and you start "hidding" content, you are done. Ironically, I think that it's the over-thinking of NewsFeed what set FB to this position. The worst on this is, that the guys from Twitter are doing the exact same mistake.
Simple simple simple, simplicity is the key for teens. You see these examples all around - Snapchat & Instagram & YikYak - these are all simple services. I bet you once Instagram starts introducing "smart" sorting of feed, they will be abandoned by teens in a instance.
Spot on. FB news feed is completely broken, and the only reason is that they're constantly tinkering with it - I guess to optimize for views, for staying time, for click throughs - whatever it is.
They need to show posts from people I follow in the order they were posted.
To prove the point, that's exactly how Facebook groups works. And I totally agree with the author that Facebook groups is great, certainly better than other ways of organizing groups.
Piggybacking off bcRIPster (now down voted) post, I'd be curious to know the race of the teen author and if the preferences he observed are the same across others with different ethnic and racial background. Among my 30-something and 40-something circle I've noticed that most of my white and Asian friends tend to utilize Facebook more while most of my black friends tend to use Twitter more. Instagram seems more evenly split.
This is only anecdotal of course, but I taught in a 99% African-American public high school and it seemed like most students were on Twitter. Most of those former students are obsessed with Snapchat now -- I do get a lot of the "I'm so bored" messages from them via My Story. I guess when you have to opt-in to see someone's Story it doesn't feel like you're spamming someone if you post a bunch -- your friends control the spigot.
If you look at the end of the article there is a short bio and his photo. He's a blond, white boy who's the spitting image of a young Mark Zuckerberg. To the "separated at birth" level of looking like him. Kinda freaky. :)
>In short, many have nailed this on the head. It’s dead to us. Facebook is something we all got in middle school because it was cool but now is seen as an awkward family dinner party we can't really leave.
What?
>Snapchat is where we can really be ourselves while being attached to our social identity. Without the constant social pressure of a follower count or Facebook friends, I am not constantly having these random people shoved in front of me. Instead, Snapchat is a somewhat intimate network of friends who I don't care if they see me at a party having fun.
I use snapchat to send funny images of myself to my girlfriend
>WhatsApp- You download it when you go abroad, you use it there for a bit before going back to iMessage and Facebook Messenger, you delete it. I know tons of people who use it to communicate with friends they made abroad, but I feel like Messenger is beginning to overshadow it. For international students, however, WhatsApp is a pivotal tool that I’ve heard is truly useful.
Back here we use WhatsApp exclusively almost, fb messenger when we must
>Tumblr is like a secret society that everyone is in, but no one talks about. Tumblr is where you are your true self and surround yourself (through who you follow) with people who have similar interests.
To me, tumblr is a place where hipsters post images from the internet, back on the internet
WhatsApp has far fewer users in North America than every other region of the world. It's not surprising that an American teenager studying at an American college would have no use for it.
I now know quite a few whatsapp users put I was patient zero for the local epidemic - and I only noticed its existence because a friend of mine from .sg introduced me to it.
>>In short, many have nailed this on the head. It’s dead to us. Facebook is something we all got in middle school because it was cool but now is seen as an awkward family dinner party we can't really leave.
>What?
The author is talking about how their grandma is on fb now and on their friendlist. They don't feel as comfortable posting certain content there.
>> Snapchat is where we can really be ourselves while being attached to our social identity. Without the constant social pressure of a follower count or Facebook friends, I am not constantly having these random people shoved in front of me. Instead, Snapchat is a somewhat intimate network of friends who I don't care if they see me at a party having fun.
> I use snapchat to send funny images of myself to my girlfriend
The first paragraph was a long, flowery quote from the "about us" page of a failed wine delivery service that went on and on about how they delivered only the finest wines hand-wrapped in crisp white napkins by elite French sommeliers, etc.
The second paragraph, his commentary, was: "I chug wine."
"Snapchat isn't like that at all and really focuses on creating the Story of a day in your life, not some filtered/altered/handpicked highlight. It’s the real you."
Snapchat has really taken over social communication in my group of friends. It's the number one way to stay in touch on a daily basis. I went from texting 4-5k messages a month, to less than a thousand.
If I'm walking down the street and see something I want to share, I'm not gonna post it on Facebook or Instagram because it isn't important enough and you are opening yourself up to be judged by hundreds, if not, thousands of people. Whereas with Snapchat, I can quickly take the pic, add a dumb caption, and send it to a select few people that I think might be entertained by it. Those people can then can either ignore it, or respond with their reaction or whatever. There is no pressure. No likes. It doesn't stick around for more than 10 seconds. Personally, I think they've done a great job with Snapchat. It does what it needs to do very well. Nothing less, nothing more.
Can someone explain to me why adding ephemeral messaging to FB, Instagram, etc. hasn't been done? If Snapchat is really getting so much traction because of one trivial feature, it seems obvious to offer that same feature.
My only interaction with these platforms is having done some work against their (rather poor) APIs, so I may be missing something terribly obvious.
Just a guess, but I'm in my thirties with a family. I use Twitter and Instagram. I like that Instagram is keeping a trail of moments that I want to keep and return to - photos of my children, etc. I'm also likely to have more discretionary income than a teenager and to perhaps be more useful to advertisers driving money in to social networks. Maybe Facebook's changes and direction are judged only on the financial return and if each change is boosting that, then so be it.
Instagram tried to do it with direct messages, but it didn't take off. This reaffirms my opinion that you can't have a single app that does everything. A couple reasons this may be true, especially in Snapchat's case:
1. Snapchat's whole UI is based around this single feature. Its reason for existence is this feature alone, so they are able to commit way more time and focus on getting this one thing right. As soon as you open the app the first you see are your snaps. Swipe left for the camera, and left again for the contacts. Super simple. Very fast to navigate.
2. Snapchat is semi-anonymous. You can set your Instagram profile to private, but it's still not the same as having an app based around short-lived pics / messages that aren't tied to your online identity.
3. Instagram = Good photos. Vine = Good videos. Facebook = Staying in touch. LinkedIn = Career stuff. Snapchat = Random things you want to share with friends. Changing people's perception of your app is hard, if not impossible (in some cases). Just like Instagram's video feature didn't replace Vine (just distracted people from Vine, and ruined Instagrams clutter free feed), Instagram's direct feature won't replace Snapchat. Having different apps for different uses, even if purely psychological, helps people separate their social lives.
Something I noticed growing up, even when I was a teen, was stuff like "what teens think today" seemed bullshity and something certain adults wanted to hear, which often never reflected my experiences. In this case, the HN-friendly Facebook bashing. Now as a middle-aged adult, its obvious its questionable writing. Its either PR of some kind or a half-assed article by someone with a teenage daughter and a deadline.
A proper survey or data about app store habits say a lot more than a questionable testimonial. Yet somehow, this little sub-genre of reporting still exists. Its like there's this constant adult neurosis about what teenagers and college students think, especially if your paycheck stems from the spending habits of that demographic. This neurosis lets us overlook a lot of things, the same way people looking for spiritual answers will sometimes flock to a known conman, cult, or abusive religion.
Funny how a lot of us were bright young kids, like you, but have become milquetoast adults falling for the same old tricks. Sounds like you're on the right path though. Don't become us.
Sorry I deleted my comment. I felt it might have been perceived as a little harsh or quick to judgement. Funny, I guess the author did get one thing right, most of our generation is quick to delete anything that may be controversial for fear it'll be enshrined on the Internet forever....
This. I mean, I can understand obsessing about the teen / YA demographic if that's who you're selling to, but the idea that what they do represents some ground-shaking historical shift, and not just a (fairly well-understood) phase in normal human lives is just ridiculous.
For me, one of the most interesting things about this piece was the total bafflement with Twitter. Not that they didn't like it, they just didn't get it. At the same time, concerns about professional life were largely restricted to "Who will be the first to hire me and will my social life be used against me?"
In other words, the way that a lot of Twitter users treat the service as a huge and never-ending professional conference (with frequent flurries from actual conferences) is totally lost on people too young to have reached this stage in their working lives.
My takeaway from this is not "Kids don't use Twitter, Twitter must be doomed". It's that Twitter is for grownups (mostly), and that it's normal for people to age out of some networks and into others, just like they age into and out of music, cars, clothes, jobs, neighborhoods, and pretty much every other aspect of cultural life.
This may be true at an emotional level, but there is a fairly unambiguous criteria for adulthood, which comes when you are able to sustain your life and perhaps the life of a family.
Then again, by that criterion a 40-year-old who loses his job and can't find another one is suddenly not an adult anymore, which doesn't really seem to match what most people want the term to mean.
I don't understand how someone can not "get" twitter but use instagram. Aren't they basically the same thing except instagram is pictures and twitter is text? That's what I thought, but I never used either.
I'm an adult and I don't understand Twitter either.
It's not that there's anything wrong with the basic idea - it's just that Twitter, the company, constantly wants to make it into something it isn't. And invariably fails at that.
I now use it for my geeky posts, and occasionally, rarely, to check my feed for interesting tweets from the masters of the startup scene.
I'm about the same age as the poster and he's captured my age groups' experience of social media, including Snapchat, perfectly. Snapchat really is that big a deal.
Except these are all just anecdotes. I'm in the same age group and Snapchat use has definitely fallen off considerably on my college campus and some of my high school friends' campuses as well.
The only thing that would prove any of this is real data, which seems to be lacking in every claim....
Re: "These are all just anecdotes" - yes, he made it very clear in the beginning of his essay:
"This article will not use any studies, data, sources, etc. This is because you can easily get that from any other technology news website and analyze from there. I’m here to provide a different view based off of my life in this “highly coveted” age bracket. That being said, I'm not an expert at this by a long shot and I'm sure there will be data that disproves some of the points I make, but this is just what I've noticed."
Yeah, except that is basically saying his analysis is worthless, in my honest opinion. Combine this with the fact that he is clearly biased towards Snapchat (just look at his personal Twitter and blog), yet doesn't disclose that fact, and you get a bad article that is taken way more seriously than it should be.
Its similar to that fake radar app that claims it detects police radar from your smartphone then at the bottom of the description says "Does not work".
edit: (To explain, I don't think the author was malicious or really at fault. I think everyone trying to draw sweeping conclusions about our generation based on this article are ignoring the "Does Not Work" warning, when it comes to the fact that there is zero sources/data behind this....)
The title clearly says "A Teenagers View on Media". It's not a little disclaimer at the bottom of the page that says "This is only my view". It's right in the title and opening paragraph.
Right, but I think it serves the same purpose. People willingly ignore it.
Either way, the original poster I responded to with the anecdote wasn't even the author of the article, but someone on here who provided another anecdote, but didn't give the same such warning or any indication that they knew what they were saying wasn't an actual relevant argument....
Well, I wouldn't say "worthless". If you're looking for a macro view of usage, sure, but again it's unfair to expect that from a piece that starts by flatly stating that's not what it provides.
What it does provide is a very clear sense as to how all of these different services end up playing very complimentary roles in an individual's life. Even if the particular services involved have a popularity that waxes or wanes, the broader picture formed by the complex decision making that resolves people's thoughts and feelings into one network or another remains fascinating. And that aspect of social media seems like it's here to stay.
So sure, this perspective may be worthless to you, but most smart people are sophisticated enough to realize that others have perspectives different from theirs. A person designing or developing social networks, for instance, would have to think about the stuff in this post very carefully if they had any hope of getting their own product into the mix. Yes, they would need the macro view too, but in the absence of the direct personal perspective (which is the perspective held by literally every single one of their prospective users), their efforts are guaranteed to fail.
Short version: if you're going to call something "worthless" be sure to include the essential qualifier "to me". Otherwise you just seem ridiculously self centered.
I only know a handful of people (myself included) that believe Snapchat does delete your photos. Everyone else I know believes that Snapchat has some secret database somewhere with all of your photos on it.
I don't think there is a lot of positive bias when he states that, "Everyone he knows believes that Snapchat has a secret database somewhere with all of your photos on it."
I'm not sure where your negative criticism is coming from. This is a single, very well written, anecdote. He EXPLICITLY states that there is almost certainly general data that will disprove everything he says. He makes it super, super clear that this is just a single individuals experience. If anything, he goes overboard in the opening paragraphs trying to disclaim everything he is about to write. Everyone else (including you) is free to write up their own stories, and from those many, many stories, we get a good picture of social media from the teenagers perspective. After all, the plural of anecdote is data.
You've repeated this many times so it must really have struck a nerve with you but it's not like this is a recommendation for SnapChat. He thinks it's the most used and he states so, I really don't see a problem with that even if he is best friends with the CEO.
A few people in the comments are also saying they've seen a drop off in Snapchat usage at their schools, but that hasn't been reflected in the app's ranking in the app store. Snapchat has maintained a top 10 rank for the last year.
It's not uncommon for journalists to cultivate relationships with insider sources. In this case, Snapchat has a history of thinking very deeply about the future of social media: for example, one of their earliest and most influential hires is a sociologist and social media theorist.
I was teaching a lesson on cryptography to a bunch of twelve year olds this morning, and with reference to https, I asked how many had used Facebook before school - no hands, how about Instagram - no hands, how about Snapchat - half the class put their hands up. It's definitely the most popular network amongst teens in my (UK) school.
>> "It's definitely the most popular network amongst teens in my (UK) school."
I'm not sure I'd put to much weight on that. From my personal use and what I've seen people seem to spend longer periods of time on Facebook. Whereas Snapchat requires seconds at a time. When you're asking who used something before school you have to remember these kids likely got out of bed, didn't have time to shower and ran to the bus :) I'd love it if you had also asked about what they did after school the previous day. Of course my evidence isn't very robust either but I don't think you can draw your conclusion from that survey.
No? In one case, you click a button and/or check a box to confirm you are of a certain age to see porn, in the other you enter a wrong number into a specific field during account creation.
In then end, people desire something (access to content and/or interaction), and all that prevents them from having it is being completely truthful in one spot about a question that really doesn't seem that important.
Fair but I was suggesting that Facebook is really only useful if you have friends but when you or your friends can't signup or their parents won't allow them to signup (in my case), there's not much reason to use Facebook.
It is kind of like not needing LinkedIn until you're in college.
Yes I thought the same thing when I read his article. My teenagers are 14 - 15. I am on Instagram. The biggest difference I see is they made the transition to SnapChat discussed in this article 12 months ago. It sounds like the author sees that happening now but with the younger ones they seem to have made the move over nearly a year ago. It's funny as I follow a few of them on Instagram and it just dried up to now only doing 1 or 2 pictures per week and they're closer to the "staged" sanitized FB ones he discusses.
Have teens ever been an important demographic for Facebook though? It started only for college students - it wasn't until three or four years later they opened it up to everyone. [And more broadly - do we use popularity among teens to measure success for anything that isn't specifically targeted primarily at teens (e.g. a company like Abercrombie & Fitch)?]
Teenagers in high school usually see their friends every day (more so than college - where you're less likely to have all or many of the same classes as your friends), there probably isn't as much desire to use a social network to keep up with what your friends/acquaintances are doing since you're experiencing it with them. After college you're more likely going weeks or months between seeing even your closest friends or family so Facebook is probably a bit more useful/exciting when your older.
But teenagers today are college students of tomorrow, and if you believe OP, the college students of tommorow may associate Facebook with years of negative impressions that they acquired throughout high school.
That's a huge barrier for Facebook to overcome, especially when a 'cooler' competitor can expand its feature set to meet the students' long-distance relationship needs without any of the stigma that they associate with Facebook.
Alternatively, rather than imprinting into a particular social network (Facebook bad, Twitter obscure, Instagram relevant) it could be that these teens will simply migrate to a different toolset when their needs change rather than expecting a tool to be used to photoblog their party lifestyle of college years to also work as a tool to keep up with post-college life. Facebook changed over time to basically follow a particular demographic (those whose age mirrored the founder) but most of the others are built for specific purposes and have a lot more inertia behind them. Maybe being first is what let Facebook change and re-define itself, but so far none of the others seem to have changed much from the day they were launched in terms of how people actually use them (and FB itself has had numerous failures in attempts to spin off mini-pivots as individual apps.)
Really interesting views on people disliking but still using Facebook. I was walking around my college's campus a few years ago and overheard a girl saying "well, he doesn't have a facebook, so thats kind of a huge red flag to me. I dont think I'm going to keep talking to him"
Funny what an animal social media has become...
I remember reading something similar from a Korean kid 10 years ago, she said "email is for older people". I wonder if this kid uses email? The only time I see something Google+ related is occasional notifications on my gmail interface.
Are there people who actively use G+? To me it seems to have turned into this weird thing that tries to offer a lot of functionality but doesn't really make it clear what it actually is. It was supposed to be a social network and now it's Google's "social layer" - whatever that may mean. I personally don't even know anyone who would describe G+ as relevant.
I think "social layer" means it's supposed to be integrated into every Google service. Google wanted everything they offered to be a single unified G+ experience that would dwarf Facebook. Which of course worked out brilliantly for them, especially on Youtube.
The only reason why I "use" G+ is for photos - and that's only because Google got rid of all the Picasa albums. But the interface is so horrible I can't believe it's actually made by google. Once you got to photos it opens the most recent album by default(why??) and the option to switch to albums view is not where you would expect it(on the 3-stripe option icon that every other product got us used to), but instead it's hidden away. It makes absolutely no sense and I hate using it as a product. The only reason why I have to visit it occasionally is that Picassa(the actual tool) is fantastic for backing up and managing pictures.
If I could break down a party for you in social media terms, here’s how it would pan out:
* On Snapchat, you post you getting ready for the party, going to the party, having fun at the party, the end of the party, and the morning after the party.
* On Facebook you post the cute, posed pictures you took with your friends at the party with a few candids (definitely no alcohol in these photos).
* On Instagram you pick the cutest one of the bunch to post to your network.
I said it then and I'll say it now, FB screwed up when they pivoted to copy Twitter. FB was fun when it was more private. Zuck should've realised that once there was a critical mass of news reports of teens getting in trouble for stupid FB and Twitter posts, teens would dump the service.
> "I have yet to ever hear of a hot post on Secret that everyone’s talking about"
I get the feeling Secret's redesign strategy is just being Yik-Yak for the post-college crowd. I'd imagine the location data is more valuable/marketable for working people in big metro areas than incomeless students.
> WhatsApp- You download it when you go abroad, you use it there for a bit before going back to iMessage and Facebook Messenger, you delete it. I know tons of people who use it to communicate with friends they made abroad, but I feel like Messenger is beginning to overshadow it. For international students, however, WhatsApp is a pivotal tool that I’ve heard is truly useful.
Perhaps the title should have been 'A North American Teenager's view of Social Media'
He uses facebook as a directory service occasionally, the same way us "old people" use linkedin.
Observationally my kids are a little younger than him and facebook is dead to them. My wife is still addicted. They used to complain about family tagging them in pix (especially embarrassing-ish such as anything from when they were little) and now they don't even care, nobody uses it.
"Not too many people talk about it." - thats not pinterest, thats reddit and 4chan. Everyone is on baconreader and clover, and just like fight club, rule one is no one talks about fight club (or 4chan or reddit).
300 comments
[ 6.4 ms ] story [ 309 ms ] threadThis isn't simply a 19 year olds experience. It is a white, suburban, middle-class, male attending a conservative university in a culturally regressive state. If nothing else, he's about as radically distant from an urban minority as you could get to the point where I'd imagine it is really impossible for him to have any perspective into other demographics and how they use these tools. I value his opinion, but it's important to take it into context.
Atleast he attempts to hedge his lack of experience in his opening statement.
Which is the demographic that all of the services in question care about (except whatsapp) - which kind of proves the point.
Also, I'm going to argue just against my experience with urban teens living in more diverse communities which doesn't really align with this kids experience.
So right away, if you want a successful smartphone app in the U.S. then you need to target, urban white men between 18-29 with at least some college and 75000+ a year in income.
I think as you say more people should target international etc... but people build toward the problems they have and the language they know. Whatsapp is killing it because they broke out of the mold. So yes, they should for many reasons, but if you just follow the money then who you target looks very homogenous.
[1] http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/mobile-technology-fac...
[2] http://www.voxburner.com/publications/6766-who-makes-in-app-...
A successful smart phone app based on these metrics is the one with the largest user base. You get that user base by providing a simple to use product that quickly addresses a need for the largest number of people, rich, poor, white, black, etc...
Now, if you're talking about targeted applications like certain types of gaming apps. Or apps that provide an extended retail experience? This is when you talk about focused demographics.
Totally agree here.
A successful smart phone app based on these metrics is the one with the largest user base.
This is where we diverge. An app is only as successful as what it can make money from. Having a billion people use something and they don't generate revenue from it is worthless in the long run - bloated investments not withstanding.
A reliable proven to be profitable user base is what consistently makes money - the facebooks etc... are extreme outliers that got lucky with monetization after growing the userbase are not really cases to be emulated.
Granted there are other cases of revenue models that we may not even be aware of that are in play. For instance Twitter initially was making money off SMS bulk transactions. They would buy SMS network blocks in volume and sale broadcasting blocks to marketers at a markup which was lower than outbound texting rates. There was good money in the margins here for a time. They don't like to talk about it publicly but they still admit that the service was built around a focus on SMS... https://blog.twitter.com/2010/introducing-fast-follow-and-ot...
This is why for a while they also tried like hell to push people to take Tweets over SMS instead of having pulling them from the web via a web browser or other web based client. Smartphones unexpectedly gimped this business model for them.
There are boutique companies today that still are trying to eep out business around this model such as this one... http://www.fabit.com/products/mobile/sms/websms/overview.asp...
...now I'm just rambling...
Hahaha, no way that is true man.
Also, bcRIPster, I believe your comments provide a valuable POV, that thing about the demographics, it hadn't ocurred to me. Thanks for posting and don't take the witch-hunt personal, remember that karma is given for people that spend all their time here, they don't reflect the holder's knowledge or politeness. Most of the downvotes here are just another way of saying "I don't like what you say but I'm uncapable of coming with an intelligent response on to why I don't agree with your opinion, hence I'll just downvote you (and absolutely everything else you post afterwards)".
I'm left feeling this is immature and punitive for a joke I made on a prior news posting where I complained about the down modding.
Would someone like to explain just how my criticism is so much more severe as to warrant attack over the other criticisms?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I was with you until you started attacking an entire ethnicity.
As for you last comment though... are you sure you meant ethnicity? Maybe you meant demographic?
I didn't downvote you, but I feel like I could have without any guilt. Have you been to Austin? Or any urban center in Texas? They are probably more conservative than Berkeley, but they're definitely blue areas. Especially Austin. I mean, Houston's mayor is a lesbian! See if you can pick out Dallas, Austin, and Houston on this map:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/2004_US_e...
And substance aside, terms like "culturally regressive" are unnecessary and inflammatory. And your post has an overall dismissive attitude of someone who is just expressing himself. He makes it extremely clear that it's just his opinion.
So maybe there is a downvote brigade, but I'm not in it. And they're redundant if you ask me.
Texas in general has always left a bad taste in my mind and their political and religious exports don't do much to change my opinion.
I always love how Austin get's thrown out as some amazing counter to excuse the rest of the state.
Sounds like a large portion of graduates from any university.
From the article: >That being said, I'm not an expert at this by a long shot and I'm sure there will be data that disproves some of the points I make, but this is just what I've noticed.
He clearly states otherwise.
At some point it starts to make you cross-eyed :P
I'm sorry, I'm know I'm poking this subject with a stick. I hope everyone understands the satire and frustration of my statement.
If I don’t get any likes on my Instagram photo or Facebook post within 15 minutes you can sure bet I'll delete it.
Super interesting take - it's as though they are posting not to show people stuff but to get people's approval for what they are posting. Simple but critically different in my opinion.
Facebook is often used by us mainly for its group functionality.
Got it, so make a better group service and bring everyone to that.
One big thing I took away is that, assuming this is representative of the demographic, they seem to not mind using multiple applications for communications. So there really is the ability to pretty narrowly specialize with functions - something I think the older generation does backwards; we want to consolidate and make services a "one stop shop."
How? I've never heard this. Whatsapp is on your phone like texts.
Unless you meant they start using it with people other than you...
$1USD = 8mb ($2 MXN = 1 mb)
In context: Daily wage is $4 USD
Facebook really should create a whatsapp for System 30+ -- they would dominate that market.
Whatsapp is really important in some markets. Just because you don't know anyone using it doesn't make that less true.
(Also, I use it, so now you do know someone using it!)
Also understand that I am FULLY aware that I do not represent my age group nor do I represent even the "average" "young" person. I represent a small demographic but I wanted to give my views from that position.
I'm just saying, just because people with dumbphones or feature phones are clamoring for WhatsApp doesn't mean that people with smartphones care at all about the service.
I think you might struggle to 'bring everyone over' to a better group service. Part of the draw of facebook is that is everyone is already 'over'.
For any given event, about 2/3 of the people will never respond to the invite, of the people who did respond it's a complete tossup who will show up, the stupid "maybe" answer which is essentially the same as not responding at all because it means "almost definitely not, but I technically could show up since I marked maybe". People often invite all their friends which includes everyone they have ever met, people that don't even live in the area or that they are close with anymore. Facebook gives you no intelligence whatsoever on the events, like "here are people you always invite" or "here are people you always invite but who never respond" etc, which would be easy to show and very helpful. There is no way to update people coming to the event on changes or anything other than posting on the event's wall, which most people will not be notified of unless they check facebook all the time, etc. etc. I could go on for so long about how shitty facebook events are, and it truly makes me sad, because really the purpose of these events is just to meet up with and have fun with friends, but the process is so frustrating I feel like it actually prevents this from happening in a lot of cases.
On that note, I am also very passively plotting out working on a better version, so if anyone is reading this and is also frustrated by facebook's crap events feel free to get in touch, hah.
So am I.
Drop a mail: miguelrochefort@gmail.com
Currently I use Facebook to see photos of my extended family, LinkedIn for work & sales, Instagram to keep up with my cooler friends, Twitter to see trending news, StockTwits to see investing ideas...
To me this is the future of social networking: many networks, each with a specialized purpose.
I use these services in different contexts.
When I'm relaxing and looking at Instagram, the last thing I want is a business article from LinkedIn or a political diatribe from Facebook.
In fact my primary problem with Facebook is that it tries to be everything to everyone.
Nilay Patel recently argued that Facebook is the new AOL, it's the portal of the 2010s. I think that is an apt description. I am using it yet also kind of just pining to drop it.
I also use it for groups and messaging. Somehow, Facebook groups are great. They're super simple, and they just work. The newsfeed on the other hand is completely broken.
You might not want one but "our generation" has been building them for some time. It's even Peter Thiel's mantra.
> Super interesting take - it's as though they are posting not to show people stuff but to
Just an idea: This is a single individual; basically anecdata. I have a sister who is 44 years old and who does the same thing and has been doing it as long as she's been on the internet (she started by blogging and has deleted hundreds of posts in the same way, in addition to her current FB, Instagram, etc. posts). I do wonder if this could be reduced to psychological typology or self-image though.
Yes that's what lives pretty strong in that generation - and on social media in general, I have the impression. For some that goes really far, maybe too far, and people become unhappy or even depressed if they are not seen/approved by others.
Which is like in real life, but also at the same time not quite: in real life conversations etc you show a lot of yourself because it's impossible to hide. Facial expressions, body language, meeting pople early in the morning when you're not at your best, on one of those days where the whole world is against you, and so on. In virtual life however you try to make sure that side of you doesn't show. You could call it a lie. I'm not sure if that is good, bad or neither.
However, I am sure there is some philosopher 200 or 100 years ago that has noticed the same phenomena with a different generational shift of technological and emotive labeling.
But I also leave up posts that don't get as many likes or comments. If I'm posting something, it's because I've spent time working on the material. I think it's good regardless. But I do know acquaintances who will delete comments they don't like and have gone to post a comment on a post only to get a "post no longer exists" message. This is only from experience on Facebook, I don't really tweet that often anymore.
I was probably like that once, even though I think I wasn't. I remember everyone around me being concerned with being "liked."
More importantly, Mean Girls and Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Wonder Years all seem that way.
Who know with kids, they make no sense in any generation. :)
It was not that I was so vain - it just seemed like a reality to me. Reality seemed to be, you have to be cool like these guys / that guy / whoever or else you will never have a girlfriend and never have sex and die alone.
In hindsight, that's stupid, idiotic even. But back then that was my life. And it's still like that for teens now. Explains why I can talk to a teen and they seem like perfectly reasonable people, except 10 minutes later they go off and do something unimaginably stupid.
Maybe it's a sort of random mutation of our social genetic makeup - teens must do stupid, senseless stuff, and some, randomly, discover something great (while lots of others just embarrass or injure themselves).
That's typical teenager behaviour. To the point that it's stereotipical.
Of course, I grew up with punk rock music, so when that happens, I just say F them and move on with my next un-liked post. (Then, the game is to see how many old friends I can repel)
And then, to me, the quality of the likes matter.
I recently posted 3 different links that were all about stuff very close to my heart - things I really care about. One was a 40 minute video. It got one like, but that like was from my father - I'd trade that for 100 friends likes. One was an article I loved; it got one like, but the guy loved it so much he shared it. And this is something - if I have reached one person's heart, it's a huge success. Another one, forget what that was, but it got likes from my brother and another person close to me.
If a post gets no likes, yeah, first of all, fuck them, and secondly only 10 people saw it thanks to Facebook's clever constant optimization algorithm so F Facebook, too.
Let's be honest, I have 300 friends, the likelihood that all 300 saw a post of mine and did NOT like it is pretty much zero. The only way I can get a post with no likes is if it was only shown to a small percentage of my friends. (or if I posted total crap but I'm not, I swear ;) )
Keeping it Real Fake
Here's my longer form take on it: http://www.techdisruptive.com/2014/05/01/vanity-sells/
[Cue reply to me saying I'm only replying so that I can see other people pay attention to me and reply to my comment.]
I'm 35 and don't post what I'm doing or showing off who I'm with every 30 minutes, and if I occasionally post something and no one comments on it, I don't care and I sure don't delete it out of some kind of embarrassment.
Going to concerts now or looking around in bars everyone is more concerned with telling everyone electronically how cool they are more than anything else and this is the real problem.
Young people now are way too concerned at impressing others and that is nothing new, but now they are able to do it 24/7 and it is an issue. They are not living their lives but have their phones shoved in their face every second vs actually interacting with others.
I am enjoying a few resturants etc enforcing a no phone policy, I wish it would become more prevalent in places where you are supposed to socially interact, with actual, real people in front of you.
If instead you immediately demand that everyone forget that you ever mentioned an uncool or not intensely popular thing, that seems more in line with "deleting the comment"
Of course, I'm over 30 so what do I know?
Deleting a post from Facebook/Instagram/etc doesn't delete it from the memory of the people who did see it. It just prevents more people from seeing it, or those people from seeing it again. So it's almost exactly like making an unpopular statement in conversation, and then abruptly changing the subject.
The business reason for multi-billion dollar social media companies is for brands and celebrities to get "likes". The only social sites that don't operate that way, are one dude in his basement sites, not billion dollar sites, where all the useful content is anyway.
Anyway, that business reason is going to rub off on all the participants. IBM isn't going to post everything, they're going to post likable stuff. No surprise IBMs followers have similar habits.
Otherwise it feels like talking to a wall.
And if you do want to do that, then don't worry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_walls is here to help.
Which is generally how the average westerner has behaved for generations. They don't acquire and desire clothes, music, books, movies, ideas, hair-styles and gadgets solely based on best personal fit. They acquire and desire based -- very heavily -- on the opinions of those tribes they admire.
(And while teenagers and young-adults are far more susceptible to this sort of "fashion", older folks are far from immune to it.)
You are going to need significant value-add to convince people to bootstrap their identities and social graph all over again. Snapchat did it by piggybacking on "people who have each other's phone numbers." Tumblr did it by not doing it - the social network is deliberately separate, and you have to be much closer to someone for them to tell you their Tumblr URL.
I will never use your service if I have to sign up, confirm my email address, add friends, convince them to sign up and actually check it, etc. Decentralization is the surest way to destroy user experience. Facebook already knows me and everyone I know in real life. Why would I not just use it?
Isn't this exactly what snapchat did though - except with a phone number instead of email?
Email? Works like a charm for my friends, and no vendor lock-in.
I don't think it's as simple as "please like me/please approve of this" but there's also a component of "Oh, you don't like this -- I won't bother anyone else with it, sorry about that!"
https://plus.google.com/communities
I have a 21 year old friend, this is how she's using Facebook:
- Accept all friends requests. There are lots because she's cute. - Go through the feed relatively often, liking every single post. - Post stuff, see who likes it. Those friends who don't like her posts are unfriended.
Needless to say, she gets a lot of likes on her posts. It's absurd to do this, of course, but at the same time it's just taking what normal people do, and taking it to its logical extreme.
I am guessing if the Facebook engineers responsible for optimizing the news feed saw this they'd have a heart attack.
It takes a special kind of stupid to even consider the idea that the photos are _really_ deleted.
What you really mean is someone who doesn't understand how technology (and tech companies) work.
This could easily be mitigated if we enforced privacy laws saying that if you tell someone something is deleted, then it must actually be securely deleted. They might even be on the books already, just enforce them.
Delete buttons should really be labelled as "hide stuff from everybody except us."
Dunno how to quote: I only know a handful of people (myself included) that believe Snapchat does delete your photos. Everyone else I know believes that Snapchat has some secret database somewhere with all of your photos on it. While I will save that debate for another day, it is safe to say that when photos are “leaked” or when there’s controversy about security on the app, we honestly do not really care. We aren't sending pictures of our Social Security Cards here, we're sending selfies and photos with us having 5 chins
* On Facebook you post the cute, posed pictures you took with your friends at the party with a few candids (definitely no alcohol in these photos).
* On Instagram you pick the cutest one of the bunch to post to your network.
Oh my god, just kill them all before it spreads.
What I find interesting is the stark contrast to people's predictions from years ago. I can recall the speculation about how in a world of facebook our lives will be documented forever, and the problems that will cause. That very real concern seems to not only have been well received, but they seem to be taking precautions. Unexpected, but very encouraging!
Sigh.
While I will save that debate for another day, it is safe to say that when photos are “leaked” or when there’s controversy about security on the app, we honestly do not really care. We aren't sending pictures of our Social Security Cards here, we're sending selfies and photos with us having 5 chins.
Disclaimer: 19 y/o who uses only Snapchat, and that perhaps four or five times a week max.
What's sad about that?
That's the OP's personal experience of course, mine is sort of the opposite: facebook has all sorts of crappy pictures, instagram has those as well but made even worse by having applied all kinds of filters most of which appeal ugly to me. Tumblr on the other hand I consider as a source for decent/pro material (as in, actually beautiful pictures taken with proper cameras). Maybe all this is because of who I'm following though.
The next few paragraphs then go on to describe Facebook as essential social plumbing. I think an FB product manager would be delighted to hear that Facebook is "dead" in this way.
This is precisely why the most successful social network of its generation was built, first and foremost, to be a platform rather than a cocktail party.
Like your parent said I see FB as "essential social plumbing", not the most glamorous or best but a necessity and way to connect to people before you go "off FB" to another app or SMS to chat/interact. The only reason I "post" to FB is b/c my Twitter posts to FB. I rarely use Twitter except from trying to get companies attention after having them ignore support requests or not having any other support at all. Multiple times I've used a websites/app's built in ticketing system only to get no response. A pissed tweet a couple days later and I've got a response within the hour... The squeaky wheel...
And 10 years ago I wouldn't dream of not having my ICQ friends. Your dreams are not the /most/ relevant.
> If specialized apps start to show up, people may start ditching FB altogether.
I assume the same will happen in my life for Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc. One day I will just stop.
^I use IRC for dev stuff now, but there was a good 5 years where it was no longer a part of my life. I was a gamer who played CS in the early 2000s.
Will they join later when they move out and seek ways to stay connected with family? Who knows - but I can definitely see why they're not there yet. I'm older, but the only reason I joined Facebook was to have a way to keep in touch with family once I moved 2000 miles away to California.
(Recently, most of the features of Facebook broke for the combo of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Firefox 34, and Ghostery. Messaging and notifications still work most of the time, but many of the other features just stall, probably waiting for some tracker. This turns out to be a feature, not a bug. No ads, no timeline, no crap.)
Ubuntu adds a Firefox extension for integrating some web sites into the desktop. It's incredibly buggy and, IME, frequently breaks on Facebook. Try disabling the extension in Firefox.
Simple simple simple, simplicity is the key for teens. You see these examples all around - Snapchat & Instagram & YikYak - these are all simple services. I bet you once Instagram starts introducing "smart" sorting of feed, they will be abandoned by teens in a instance.
They need to show posts from people I follow in the order they were posted.
To prove the point, that's exactly how Facebook groups works. And I totally agree with the author that Facebook groups is great, certainly better than other ways of organizing groups.
>In short, many have nailed this on the head. It’s dead to us. Facebook is something we all got in middle school because it was cool but now is seen as an awkward family dinner party we can't really leave.
What?
>Snapchat is where we can really be ourselves while being attached to our social identity. Without the constant social pressure of a follower count or Facebook friends, I am not constantly having these random people shoved in front of me. Instead, Snapchat is a somewhat intimate network of friends who I don't care if they see me at a party having fun.
I use snapchat to send funny images of myself to my girlfriend
>WhatsApp- You download it when you go abroad, you use it there for a bit before going back to iMessage and Facebook Messenger, you delete it. I know tons of people who use it to communicate with friends they made abroad, but I feel like Messenger is beginning to overshadow it. For international students, however, WhatsApp is a pivotal tool that I’ve heard is truly useful.
Back here we use WhatsApp exclusively almost, fb messenger when we must
>Tumblr is like a secret society that everyone is in, but no one talks about. Tumblr is where you are your true self and surround yourself (through who you follow) with people who have similar interests.
To me, tumblr is a place where hipsters post images from the internet, back on the internet
edit: added location, might be very relevant
http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2014/24497/whatsapp-by-...
(disclaimer: am in UK, am 31, don't have a lawn)
>What?
The author is talking about how their grandma is on fb now and on their friendlist. They don't feel as comfortable posting certain content there.
> I use snapchat to send funny images of myself to my girlfriend
This exchange reminds me of a page from Phil Kaplan's excellent book of failures from the first dot-com boom (http://www.amazon.com/Fd-Companies-Spectacular-Dot-com-Flame...)
The first paragraph was a long, flowery quote from the "about us" page of a failed wine delivery service that went on and on about how they delivered only the finest wines hand-wrapped in crisp white napkins by elite French sommeliers, etc.
The second paragraph, his commentary, was: "I chug wine."
You can be the real you, only on Snapchat!
"Snapchat isn't like that at all and really focuses on creating the Story of a day in your life, not some filtered/altered/handpicked highlight. It’s the real you."
Snapchat has really taken over social communication in my group of friends. It's the number one way to stay in touch on a daily basis. I went from texting 4-5k messages a month, to less than a thousand.
If I'm walking down the street and see something I want to share, I'm not gonna post it on Facebook or Instagram because it isn't important enough and you are opening yourself up to be judged by hundreds, if not, thousands of people. Whereas with Snapchat, I can quickly take the pic, add a dumb caption, and send it to a select few people that I think might be entertained by it. Those people can then can either ignore it, or respond with their reaction or whatever. There is no pressure. No likes. It doesn't stick around for more than 10 seconds. Personally, I think they've done a great job with Snapchat. It does what it needs to do very well. Nothing less, nothing more.
My only interaction with these platforms is having done some work against their (rather poor) APIs, so I may be missing something terribly obvious.
1. Snapchat's whole UI is based around this single feature. Its reason for existence is this feature alone, so they are able to commit way more time and focus on getting this one thing right. As soon as you open the app the first you see are your snaps. Swipe left for the camera, and left again for the contacts. Super simple. Very fast to navigate.
2. Snapchat is semi-anonymous. You can set your Instagram profile to private, but it's still not the same as having an app based around short-lived pics / messages that aren't tied to your online identity.
3. Instagram = Good photos. Vine = Good videos. Facebook = Staying in touch. LinkedIn = Career stuff. Snapchat = Random things you want to share with friends. Changing people's perception of your app is hard, if not impossible (in some cases). Just like Instagram's video feature didn't replace Vine (just distracted people from Vine, and ruined Instagrams clutter free feed), Instagram's direct feature won't replace Snapchat. Having different apps for different uses, even if purely psychological, helps people separate their social lives.
https://twitter.com/thatswattsup/status/546018511902867456
> Can't wait to visit my friends at @Snapchat again tomorrow :D
https://twitter.com/thatswattsup/status/545326840940740608
> Loved hanging out with @evanspiegel yesterday, he's one of the nicest and more genuine guys I've met. Thanks for having me @Snapchat!
...influencer? Hope not :(
A proper survey or data about app store habits say a lot more than a questionable testimonial. Yet somehow, this little sub-genre of reporting still exists. Its like there's this constant adult neurosis about what teenagers and college students think, especially if your paycheck stems from the spending habits of that demographic. This neurosis lets us overlook a lot of things, the same way people looking for spiritual answers will sometimes flock to a known conman, cult, or abusive religion.
Funny how a lot of us were bright young kids, like you, but have become milquetoast adults falling for the same old tricks. Sounds like you're on the right path though. Don't become us.
For me, one of the most interesting things about this piece was the total bafflement with Twitter. Not that they didn't like it, they just didn't get it. At the same time, concerns about professional life were largely restricted to "Who will be the first to hire me and will my social life be used against me?"
In other words, the way that a lot of Twitter users treat the service as a huge and never-ending professional conference (with frequent flurries from actual conferences) is totally lost on people too young to have reached this stage in their working lives.
My takeaway from this is not "Kids don't use Twitter, Twitter must be doomed". It's that Twitter is for grownups (mostly), and that it's normal for people to age out of some networks and into others, just like they age into and out of music, cars, clothes, jobs, neighborhoods, and pretty much every other aspect of cultural life.
It's not that there's anything wrong with the basic idea - it's just that Twitter, the company, constantly wants to make it into something it isn't. And invariably fails at that.
I now use it for my geeky posts, and occasionally, rarely, to check my feed for interesting tweets from the masters of the startup scene.
The only thing that would prove any of this is real data, which seems to be lacking in every claim....
"This article will not use any studies, data, sources, etc. This is because you can easily get that from any other technology news website and analyze from there. I’m here to provide a different view based off of my life in this “highly coveted” age bracket. That being said, I'm not an expert at this by a long shot and I'm sure there will be data that disproves some of the points I make, but this is just what I've noticed."
Its similar to that fake radar app that claims it detects police radar from your smartphone then at the bottom of the description says "Does not work".
edit: (To explain, I don't think the author was malicious or really at fault. I think everyone trying to draw sweeping conclusions about our generation based on this article are ignoring the "Does Not Work" warning, when it comes to the fact that there is zero sources/data behind this....)
Either way, the original poster I responded to with the anecdote wasn't even the author of the article, but someone on here who provided another anecdote, but didn't give the same such warning or any indication that they knew what they were saying wasn't an actual relevant argument....
Then it's their own darn faults.
What it does provide is a very clear sense as to how all of these different services end up playing very complimentary roles in an individual's life. Even if the particular services involved have a popularity that waxes or wanes, the broader picture formed by the complex decision making that resolves people's thoughts and feelings into one network or another remains fascinating. And that aspect of social media seems like it's here to stay.
So sure, this perspective may be worthless to you, but most smart people are sophisticated enough to realize that others have perspectives different from theirs. A person designing or developing social networks, for instance, would have to think about the stuff in this post very carefully if they had any hope of getting their own product into the mix. Yes, they would need the macro view too, but in the absence of the direct personal perspective (which is the perspective held by literally every single one of their prospective users), their efforts are guaranteed to fail.
Short version: if you're going to call something "worthless" be sure to include the essential qualifier "to me". Otherwise you just seem ridiculously self centered.
I only know a handful of people (myself included) that believe Snapchat does delete your photos. Everyone else I know believes that Snapchat has some secret database somewhere with all of your photos on it.
I don't think there is a lot of positive bias when he states that, "Everyone he knows believes that Snapchat has a secret database somewhere with all of your photos on it."
I'm not sure where your negative criticism is coming from. This is a single, very well written, anecdote. He EXPLICITLY states that there is almost certainly general data that will disprove everything he says. He makes it super, super clear that this is just a single individuals experience. If anything, he goes overboard in the opening paragraphs trying to disclaim everything he is about to write. Everyone else (including you) is free to write up their own stories, and from those many, many stories, we get a good picture of social media from the teenagers perspective. After all, the plural of anecdote is data.
You've repeated this many times so it must really have struck a nerve with you but it's not like this is a recommendation for SnapChat. He thinks it's the most used and he states so, I really don't see a problem with that even if he is best friends with the CEO.
I'm not sure I'd put to much weight on that. From my personal use and what I've seen people seem to spend longer periods of time on Facebook. Whereas Snapchat requires seconds at a time. When you're asking who used something before school you have to remember these kids likely got out of bed, didn't have time to shower and ran to the bus :) I'd love it if you had also asked about what they did after school the previous day. Of course my evidence isn't very robust either but I don't think you can draw your conclusion from that survey.
In then end, people desire something (access to content and/or interaction), and all that prevents them from having it is being completely truthful in one spot about a question that really doesn't seem that important.
It is kind of like not needing LinkedIn until you're in college.
My middle school aged kids have no interest in Facebook at all. Instagram definitely, and texting constantly. I'm sure Snapchat will come soon too.
Teenagers in high school usually see their friends every day (more so than college - where you're less likely to have all or many of the same classes as your friends), there probably isn't as much desire to use a social network to keep up with what your friends/acquaintances are doing since you're experiencing it with them. After college you're more likely going weeks or months between seeing even your closest friends or family so Facebook is probably a bit more useful/exciting when your older.
That's a huge barrier for Facebook to overcome, especially when a 'cooler' competitor can expand its feature set to meet the students' long-distance relationship needs without any of the stigma that they associate with Facebook.
People have email addresses to sign up. Once signed up, the social connections are made on the platform.
This actually makes it relevant for me, but sure, it's not relevant for most people.
If I could break down a party for you in social media terms, here’s how it would pan out:
* On Snapchat, you post you getting ready for the party, going to the party, having fun at the party, the end of the party, and the morning after the party.
* On Facebook you post the cute, posed pictures you took with your friends at the party with a few candids (definitely no alcohol in these photos).
* On Instagram you pick the cutest one of the bunch to post to your network.
I said it then and I'll say it now, FB screwed up when they pivoted to copy Twitter. FB was fun when it was more private. Zuck should've realised that once there was a critical mass of news reports of teens getting in trouble for stupid FB and Twitter posts, teens would dump the service.
The author seems like he's on the high end of social media use.
As a 22 year old male I check Facebook occasionally to see what my friends and family who live in different areas are doing, and that's about it.
I get the feeling Secret's redesign strategy is just being Yik-Yak for the post-college crowd. I'd imagine the location data is more valuable/marketable for working people in big metro areas than incomeless students.
Perhaps the title should have been 'A North American Teenager's view of Social Media'
Edit: Minor re-wording
Observationally my kids are a little younger than him and facebook is dead to them. My wife is still addicted. They used to complain about family tagging them in pix (especially embarrassing-ish such as anything from when they were little) and now they don't even care, nobody uses it.
"Not too many people talk about it." - thats not pinterest, thats reddit and 4chan. Everyone is on baconreader and clover, and just like fight club, rule one is no one talks about fight club (or 4chan or reddit).