>Facebook has 18 percent increase year over year. They have ~2B users.
That's nearly 2/3 of people on the planet with Internet connections, according to estimates by the ITU (approx 3B internet users by the end of 2016) [0]. Even if I believed that user figure, which I dont, there is no way Facebook can grow at the same rate for much longer.
I don't know anything about this overall, but I have some interesting anecdotes that show the power of Facebook around the world.
I've done some pretty substantial traveling throughout Asia, and just about everyone with a smartphone that I've met also has a Facebook account (excluding China).
In Myanmar (aka Burma) the strict military government restricted internet usage until they turned over control of the government last year. Most people are (within the last 12-24 months) using the internet for the first time! Most have never used a computer, and they only know the internet from an (Android) smartphone. However, every single person who I talked to there who had a smartphone had a Facebook.
The one local I talked to most in depth about this had never used Google! He said he didn't know how to use Google, and he didn't think he needed it. I explained what Google can help with: searching for information, reading news, etc. He showed me that he read news and did searches for things all from within the Facebook app.
I saw similar usage of Facebook in other developing Asian countries (Nepal, Thailand, Indonesia), where people used Facebook as a kind of substitute for a web browser / search engine.
You and I would never think to use Facebook as our internet portal, but it seems to be a very sticky and powerful tool for many of those just coming online.
>I explained what Google can help with: searching for information, reading news, etc. He showed me that he read news and did searches for things all from within the Facebook app.
This is the most frightening thing I've read in a while.
This is such a crappy suggestion: That we are all just acting in our own self-interest. I'm privileged enough that this is not the case, and I despise the implication. It's like voting for Trump just because of the huge tax cut I will get. Not everyone thinks this way.
This. I don't know if the parent was asking a serious question or trolling, but my response is an "anti-Facebook" one, not a "pro-Google" one. Facebook has demonstrated that it is willing to exert much more editorial control, and is much more interested in "controlling your experience". Google seems focused on attempting to provide you with the most quality content that addresses your query.
Maybe that's what it is. "Quality content" and "Facebook" in the same sentence sounds absurd.
I guess it depends on how you see things. I see Google wanting to exert their own power and control on you as well. See all of their own property integrations into search results, quoting the first result as an "answer" whether it be right or wrong, snippets in news, Amp, Yelp and other suing Google for preferring its own placements, Google recommending you install a modern browser called Chrome when you're using Firefox (not sure if they do this anymore. I'd assume not).
Google also linking to the web after ads or their own stuff is a benefit over FB of course. But I don't see that being Google's focus.
Buzzfeed has some surprisingly good long form pieces. A recent one discusses in detail what's going on in Myanmar[1]. I found it interesting, but depressing.
The cesspool of fake news, Trump gossip, etc, turning into hot topics amongst Myanmar's budding online culture is sad, like a virus spreading.
Another worrisome side effect is the quick adoption of the medium by hate groups inciting violence towards religious minorities with outright lies compounded by the fact that most Myanmar users don't yet know fact checking is possible thanks to the walled garden.
Some users have landed in jail for not realizing posts containing jests about government officials were viewable by said authorities. The country's speech laws are still evolving and users struggle to understand brand new ceoncepts like scoping of comments.
Facebook saw the "we're saturating the number of people on the Internet" wall years ago. That's why they zero-rate the app, and integrated SMS notifications and had J2ME and SIM apps.
They also have a "free basics" program which partners with networks (I think primarily developing countries) and gives people access to Facebook with no network/bandwidth costs. Seems like a win-win? https://developers.facebook.com/docs/internet-org
Gotcha. I'm not sure it's a win-win, but it feels crazy to say that giving 0 free sites is better than giving Facebook free. It's a level playing field, sure, but consumers are worse off than if they had free access to Facebook.
In my opinion, opportunity is better than equality.
A lot of people think this way, Zuck included, and that's what makes the decision in India so interesting and, at least for me, correct.
FB does not categorically improve the quality of life for its users. FB provides connectivity to others... this is good. But if the cost is making you think the world is askew from what it really is because all you see is what FB's feed shows you... well that's a steep price that nobody, even the poor, should be asked to pay.
I wasn't suggesting it's failing. The point I was replying to was if Free Basics is a "win-win" and I'm saying there's at least one large democratic nation that thought otherwise.
I envision that Facebook really wants to become the wechat of the world. From the lessons of Trump, if mark becomes the president I see him really pushing FB politically.
You and I both. Facebook numbers have been a scam for a long time. I look at most social media as I look at multilevel marketing... it's all sunshine and rainbows until it simply collapses. There are no 100 year businesses in social.
I think you're severely underestimating the scale and reach of Facebook. There's a reason it's a ~450B company.
It really does have that many users. Even if a solid 20% of them are all fake accounts (which I don't think the percentage is that high), it's still a large part of the connected world.
There's a reason Facebook is developing technology to bring the rest of the unconnected world online. It's because they know they'll reach a point where they'll have the whole connected market, and the only way forward is to grow the market to it's full potential.
Don't let your hatred of the product or company blind your understanding of its scale and influence on the world (both positive and negative).
It is not hate and you may well be right about the scale and reach of facebook right now. However, I think many people over-estimate the real utility of Facebook. That is, lives would not materially change for the better or worse if facebook fell off the face of the internet tomorrow, imo. Emotional reactions aside, Gajendra from Nepal and Tom from California would continue with life as they did before Facebook was available.
The Yellow pages had a similar story not too long ago...
I really do think that broad, sweeping statements like that can't be used so liberally for a product that billions of people use in so many different ways. The way we use Facebook here in America is not the same as the way people use Facebook in Thailand (in fact, it's extremely different). The way a college student uses Facebook is not the same as the way a mid 30s male uses Facebook.
I'll give you one data point. When I was in college, we had a Facebook group for every single class and they were extremely valuable. We also used Facebook events heavily for various on-campus events. This too was extremely valuable. Now that I'm out of college, I have less affinity with those products from Facebook but I gravitate towards different parts of the site now.
Either way, you can say that your life would not materially change for the better or worse if Facebook fell off the face of the internet tomorrow. That's a valid opinion to hold. But don't make the folly of generalizing a global product that is so incredibly pervasive in ways that we can't fully understand. I'm not saying that this reality is a good thing, nor am I saying it's a bad thing. However we can have better conversations about the effect Facebook has than "Facebook is useless", "Zuck is a spy", "I deleted my account, fuck FB", "All their metrics are fake", "Something something Myspace".
Those simply aren't interesting statements anymore. They just aren't. They're tired and have been repeated year after year for more than a decade.
Agree and upvoted. That said, sweeping statements can be useful if they point to a trend. In mature markets, there does appear to be a segment that is turned off by FB and it's not clear if these are being replaced by newer users. If that pattern repeats in newer markets then as the user base ages it portends to trouble for FB.
For a large portion of the population, Facebook IS the web. You say it adds no value. I say it adds a ton: Facebook is their Google. Without "a google" - something to make sense of this mess of trillions of pages, the web is damn useless. Google might be your Google, but Facebook is their Google, and becoming more people's Google every day. Sure, you can slot another company into Facebook. But you could do the same for Google too. Doesn't mean they're useless or scams.
Most importantly, Facebook is the small town local web that never really happened anywhere. Or rather: that happened everywhere, but only exactly once, being outdated ever since, complete with mandatory "under construction" gifs and a forum where the last post is an advertisement for some polyphonic ringtone scam.
For a lot of people, Facebook as addictive as watching TV so I don't think they'll be disappearing anytime soon.
In fact this is how I think of them and their business interests; they are nothing more than merchants of human attention (like Google). After all, the bulk of their revenues comes directly from ads.
VR may be toy-like tech for a lot of people today, but Zuckerberg is betting on it to be the next big frontier for computing similar to how they doubled-down on mobile with the emergence of touch screens heralded by the iPhone.
There's no 100 year business for the web period. It's only a few decades old. You can predict all you want about Google or Amazon, but you don't know where they'll be in 50 years.
That's nearly 2/3 of people on the planet with Internet connections, according to estimates by the ITU (approx 3B internet users by the end of 2016) [0]. Even if I believed that user figure, which I dont, there is no way Facebook can grow at the same rate for much longer.
[0] http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/facts/ICTFa...