Where Worlds Collide » Social Media

Facebook: How soon before it’s circling the drain?

Tim Hall — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 12:51:05 +0000

At the moment, Facebook’s only selling point is the network effect from the size of it’s user base. People put up with the appallingly bad user experience and increasingly mercenary behaviour because all their friends are there. I think it’s only a matter of time before a competitor reaches a critical mass of users and Facebook goes the way of AOL and MySpace. It will happen sooner and far more rapidly than many people think.

Sunset on Instagram

Tim Hall — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 18:05:49 +0000

With the news that Instagram’s new terms-of-service appears to allow them to sell users’ photos to any third party without restrictions, I do have to wonder if there’s a viable business model for social networking other than free access in return for selling your personal data to advertisers.

Paid subscription websites have never really got off the ground. It seems people are quite happy to shell out significant amounts of money on laptops, tablets and mobile devices, yet the market is resistant to paying for online services, which can’t compete with “free” (even though you end up paying far more than you realise in other ways).

It will be interesting to see what happens to app.net, which is an ad-free, subscription-based social network. Will it break out beyond a small niche of technophiles, or will it only ever be used by small numbers of enthusiasts?

I can see a “freemium” model working; a basic “free” model supported by advertising, with a paid subscription option for power users that banishes the ads and adds both more features and gives users more control over their personal data. As far as I know, nobody does this.

We shall have to see what sort of backlash Instagram’s announcement generates. If they end up losing a significant proportion of their user base, maybe the next generation of social media startups will explore other models?

Why I Hate Facebook (again)

Tim Hall — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 20:02:26 +0000

If you’ve got more than a handful of “friends” on Facebook, sooner or later you’ll start seeing a lot of this sort of fluff.

It’s typically shared pictures that aren’t actually photos your friends have taken, but graphics containing Hallmark card platitudes and passive-aggressive emotional blackmail, and sometimes a tide of this rubbush threatens to overwhelm the feed. I think it’s a consequence of Facebook’s edge-rank algorithm favouring pictures over text. I’m muting them on an industrial scale, with anything from Someecards, source of the example above getting shot on sight.

Now there is a blog on tumblr dedicated to this nauseating “inspirational” drivel. Got to love the sarcastic comments against each one.

As for where this stuff comes from, it’s worth quoting this comment left on an earlier post on this blog:

You ready to really hate them? Most of them come from like-farm accounts. You make a Page, you autopost platitudes, Cheezburger pics, someecards, patriotic tripe, whatever. Then you auction off the page to spammers. Yep, you want a Facebook page with 20,000 fans? Who are pre-selected for naÃ¯vetÃ©? You can buy one.

Quite.