Something I try to explain to tech peeps/investors is the danger of seeing yourself as the outcome, rather than the enabler. It leads to creating 'value' that isn't valuable to the user. It just complicates their journey to the outcome you are meant to deliver. Facebook is speed-running that. /1 - ThreadSky

garius.bsky.social • 56 days ago

Something I try to explain to tech peeps/investors is the danger of seeing yourself as the outcome, rather than the enabler.

It leads to creating 'value' that isn't valuable to the user. It just complicates their journey to the outcome you are meant to deliver.

Facebook is speed-running that. /1

Reposted from Daily Dot

“Big influencers need to start looking at Meta sideways after this. They making these fake AI accounts so they don’t have to pay y’all for content."

"They are manufacturing the human experience ... This is a threat to all of us.”

READ MORE: www.dailydot.com/debug/meta-a...

Comments

donnamartina.bsky.social•56 days ago

📌 Explaining enshittification in a nutshell

deyasi.bsky.social•55 days ago

Great thread, as usual, Garius. Thanks!

iamnormalearthboy.bsky.social•55 days ago

Yeah, but they already know that, and plan to get around it by making God. Elon Musk - supporter of Trump - let the mask slip when he said AI would be smarter than all of humanity combined by 2029. Why else back the failed traitor? "Good" news is, his bet on <4 years really means you have 8 years.

pedrojuk.bsky.social•55 days ago

📌

kevparkes.bsky.social•56 days ago

📌

fagankara.bsky.social•56 days ago

And honestly this applies to much in the market. Creating value that is not valuable to people, while failing to create what is valuable to people.

jon-jones.bsky.social•55 days ago

📌

swearyanthony.bsky.social•56 days ago

It's slightly adjacent I guess but the BOFH trope of sysadmin dealing with people who aren't able to use their computer? Your literal job, note the second half of the term sysadmin, is to help them use the computer to do their work

swearyanthony.bsky.social•56 days ago

If the folks you work with as a sysadmin can't figure out how to use the printer? That's on you to fix

fuzcat.bsky.social•56 days ago

I remember reading a bofh humor column years ago, and not being able to articulate why it bothered me. You just did, and well.

swearyanthony.bsky.social•56 days ago

I mean that's also the Dilbert cartoons

swearyanthony.bsky.social•56 days ago

Hurr hurr dumb people who can't work out to use the printer. That's on you to fix that. Again the second half of "sysadmin" is "admin". You are support staff for the folks who do work

sunburycross.bsky.social•55 days ago

Facebook now is just seeing ads, suggested groups, suggested idiots, reels of rubbish and no-one I know. I’m returning to greetings cards and a fountain pen.

swishbob.bsky.social•56 days ago

Oh man, now I'm remembering that Friends Reunited existed.

Maybe even still exists, but I'm not going to try and find out.

ryanhumphrey.bsky.social•56 days ago

I think the only useful feature Facebook has added in the last 15 years was Marketplace, and even that’s implemented poorly

I’m really starting to wonder how fast a clean Facebook competitor that only shows you friends and family could take off

modaviau.bsky.social•55 days ago

It’s been done. https://MeWe.com. Too few FB users wanted to make the jump. The UX was practically identical.

joycereynoldsward.bsky.social•55 days ago

Not exactly...and shortly after I set up a MeWe account, it became a right wing haven. Deleted that one and never looked back.

ryanhumphrey.bsky.social•55 days ago

There were no lack of Twitter clones over the years, and then a rush of them once it became clear that Twitter/X was entering decline. Most of them failed without a blip, but Bsky has now already surpassed it by some metrics, and could fully eclipse it within a year or two

Facebook is vulnerable

garius.bsky.social•56 days ago

Facebook, during its explosive growth stage, was ALWAYS about engineering and maintaining connections with people.

That's the outcome people wanted (and largely still want). Facebook's PRODUCT was that it provided a simple, and even passive, way to reach that outcome. /2

garius.bsky.social•56 days ago

This is (and has been) true for a whole bunch of social platforms. Arguably it's the root offering of all of them.

Facebook was just an early (not first) mover in the space, hitting at the EXACT time that javascript and server tech was good enough to make the experience very user friendly. /3

garius.bsky.social•56 days ago

THIS was what attracted 'regular' people to Facebook. Go there and you can know that you've seen what your relatives and friends are up to. Share what you're doing. It was a tool to facilitate connections that previously had to be in person, over the phone or by chain letter. /4

asfried.bsky.social•56 days ago

I still use FB for that purpose and for following particular groups but it’s become really spammy. I need to block posts and ads a lot there.

garius.bsky.social•56 days ago

The important thing was that it made doing those things EASIER than the alternatives. And it even made them PASSIVE.

Because maintaining social connections until then was enormously time consuming, particularly for women, as that's mostly where the emotional labour in families always falls. /5

garius.bsky.social•56 days ago

So Facebook's core product was (and remains) its role as a FACILITATOR of social connection. The method was through things like update posts, statuses, tagging, even efforts to allow you to play scrabble clones against relatives remotely.

The product was the REAL connections it enabled. /6

sdowney.bsky.social•56 days ago

Facebook was an address book that stayed up to date automatically. Current status of the people in my address book was a huge bonus.

Everything else is 'me as the product' -- which I'll accept for the core value to me.

garius.bsky.social•56 days ago

The problem is that in any tech business - particularly one focused on growth (which is, sadly, most of them) at some point you have to start thinking of YOURSELF as the product. That's what brings in the bucks.

"People are using Facebook to connect."

Becomes:

"People are using Facebook." /7

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply