Why is Facebook still so insanely popular?
Why is Facebook still so insanely popular?
I read "it's dying" by people on Discord and Reddit all the time, but the numbers prove otherwise. It's been going up this entire time and sitting over 3 billion MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS!
I feel like the bubble around people on other platforms saying "who uses Facebook anymore lol" is kind of wild given the numbers. Keep in mind these are active users not just abandoned accounts.
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I live in a rural community. Facebook has more or less replaced the web here.
Businesses post their hours, specials, and information on Facebook. Some of them don't have websites. The rec centre has a hard time keeping their website up to date, but the Facebook group is always accurate. Newspapers have closed down, so a Facebook group keeps people apprised of what's going on (it seems to be pretty accurate, since everyone in town is part of it, people involved in events chime in). Kids and adults sports groups advertise and tell their members what's going on via Facebook groups.
It's a shitty medium, since the Facebook algorithm mixes trash advertisements with town-specific events, but it seems to suffice for the town's needs.
I suspect it isn't just my town. The network effect is strong, so I suspect there are niche communities where Facebook is verging on ubiquitous.
I find this so annoying. I don’t use Facebook, so if you post info about your business on there, I just won’t see it and won’t use your business.
to look at it objectively, if you don't use the service you're simply not part of the demographic targeted by the business employing
bythat service. That's mutual.It's lazy and stupid to host your entire company's online presence on a for-profit proprietary platform.
It's lazy and stupid
Another way to say the above would be "simple and easy". Which is why it's done by a lot of small businesses that don't have the expertise (or the funds to hire expertise) to do something better
If it's a small town hardware store, it's easier for them to manage a Facebook page that they can access using their regular Facebook account.
Good luck to them when Facebook starts throttling their views and demanding money for more exposure. And good luck to them since they don't show up on Google or yellow pages sites, nor have a website listed on Google maps. Like the other person said above, plenty of people will just do business elsewhere.
Instead of just doing W analysis, why don't you learn SWOT analysis instead. It will water down your bias.
Businesses are in the business of running their business, not worrying about FOSS principles and the open web. They can set up a quick information front without having to pay for a webmaster, hosting space, server space, an ISP to handle all that traffic, etc. So why would they care or want to spend the effort otherwise at their size?
I addressed the question in your last sentence here:
What part of “they don’t care” are you having trouble wrapping your head around? They’ll either live with it, or move to another platform that’s easy to use.
IT is not a core competency of most businesses and their goal is to minimize time to deploy and effort on parts that are not core to their business. If it means spending slightly more then so be it. It’s the “build or buy” problem and since IT isn’t their thing, “buy at the cheapest price possible” is gonna win every time.
Most small business need all the business they can get. But if they don't care, then that is on them.
How often do you look at the website of a restaurant before going to it? If they don't have a website and instead just a Google maps page does that stop you?
Quite often.
Fair enough
This is real funny because you can get throttled by big corporations even if (or rather especially if) you're self hosting pretty much the same way
I have never once had one of my websites throttled, and I've been building websites for 20 years.
Yeah I found out the same when I moved back to Iceland. Buying a used car? Renting an apartment? Staying up to date on the parents groups in school, kids sports, any events by any business or group? Contacting any person?
Being forced to hand over all my personal information just to do any of the above really doesn’t sit well with me 😑
It sucks that you need to give them anything, but you don’t have to give them everything, and depending on what information the people you’re interacting with see, the information you give Facebook doesn’t necessarily need to be accurate.
There's much more info about you up for grabs if you use facebook.
This. In the west among the younger generations, sure, Facebook is outdated/dead. Among other generations, and across much of the world, it is still almost as essential as email.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Zero
A criticism also stated that Facebook is practicing digital colonialism because it is not introducing open internet but building a "little web that turns the user into a mostly passive consumer of mostly western corporate content”.
An article by Christopher Mims in Quartz in September 2012 stated that Facebook Zero played a very important role in Facebook's expansion in Africa over the 18 months following the release of Facebook Zero, noting that data charges could be a significant component of mobile usage cost and the waiving of these charges reduced a significant disincentive for people in Africa to use Facebook.
To me as a kid with a rudimentary phone and little pocket money, this was also how I got onto and used to access Facebook.
Kind of reminds me of what AOL was trying to do in the ’90s. If it wasn’t for broadband Internet coming directly from telecom services they might’ve succeeded, too.
digital colonialism
Lmao
What else would you call it? It’s them trying to be the face of the internet, the only internet these people know.
Something less dramatic and hilarious probably. Maybe manipulative business tactics.
This is infuriating to me. The Internet gave every person and every company a completely blank slate from which to represent their identity. A slate owned by no one. Then everyone voluntarily decided that's too hard and moved everything over to the god awful site that is Facebook. Ugh.
Facebook leveraged people's lack of technical know-how and laziness
Facebook is the closest thing to the Chinese concept of an everything app that the US has.
Puke
I'm almost a pariah in my rural area because I refuse to have a Facebook account or an iPhone.
Gotta be something wrong with that boy, Martha.
This is the best answer.
Yup niche communities is spot on. I’m into disc golf but most of the community news and local club updates still primarily occur on FB. This is also an extension of suburban and rural community popularity.