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Comment by eksemplar | Hacker News Reader

The sole reason I’m still on Facebook is because events are organized on Facebook. I know I’d still get invited if I deleted Facebook, but I don’t really want to be the person, that everyone always have to text message for rsvp, planning, changes and so on.

This only happens in Facebook because everyone in my social circle is on Facebook though. Young people aren’t faced with this platform lock in and I absolutely agree with you, why would they ever join?

Facebook is basically the yellow pages at this point, and how many millennials ever used a phone book?

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I removed facebook from my home screen on android and replaced it with twitter.

It was surprisingly easy to forget about facebook. I had already basically avoided it for a month or two. The twitter icon was my reminder/mindless app to kill a few minutes. Twitter sucks too, but its different.

I'll check my facebook when I remember, maybe once a week when my wife mentions a friend posted something crazy on facebook. I'll check my notifications for events, but its mostly garbage.

My tech-spider-sense says the masses are losing interest in facebook.

Kinda similar. I stopped using FB since a year. I don't post anymore and check notifications like once a month. I realized you can't quit social cold turkey unless you have something to do in that time. Luckily for me, I started liking Twitter, Reddit and some PUBG.

The masses (especially boomers in America) still use Facebook, they've just retreated into groups, messenger, and marketplace. This behavior aligns with Facebook's product focuses. The Facebook killer does not exist yet.

Personally, Twitter makes me feel gross. Too much marketing spam in a small amount of time. Too easy to get sucked in and lose 30 minutes of my life to informationless noise.

I had a clicketty clicky addiction to Facebook, which I replaced with the reddit mobile app.

In a past age I was a true believer in reddit, up until 2010-2011. I had a >6-year old account. True believer, paid for gold, believed that to be something special. Reddit ruined that and went for a different, shallower audience. Turns out, that audience is also me.

The problem with reddit got significantly worse when companies started AstroTurfing campaigns there.

Shilling and karma farming have killed ingenuous sharing of information. I used to go on reddit to discover new things. That's no longer the case. I still visit small subs about some shows, games, languages, etc, but I am no longer exposed to unexpected unknown information.

On twitter you just block the accounts that are sending you promoted tweets. Eventually, you'll run out of people trying to target you. You have no recourse on Facebook.

You'll still see promoted tweets, they'll just get more and more strange as you collect all the bigger corporate brand accounts in your blocklist.

Strange random ads are ok compared to seeing creepy demographically targeted ads. Also, there are only so many national brands who are willing to spend money indiscriminately.

I'm going to be that person once I get around to messaging everyone alternative contact means. However, I cannot even be bothered to login to Facebook just to do that...

Not that it would change anything. Being on facebook means that people think they can invite me there, when in reality, I won't see anything until weeks or months later.

Are these events open or friends only?

I ask because open invite eventing sucks. (I imagine organizing friends only events do too, but I wouldn't know, because we empty nesters no longer socialize like that.)

My primary volunteer gig has been experimenting with using both facebook and meetup to publish meetings, GOTV (phone banking, signature gathering), important calendar dates (eg elections).

Both kinda suck. Most of our members still get looped in via our email blasts.

But I don't really know what would be better. Looking for ideas.

(I do have ideas. But hoping to avoid making my own solution.)

Disclosure: I work for Paperless Post.

PaperlessPost is a events company and we recently launched a product named "Flyer". It's an easy way to create an event and collect RSVP's using a unique URL. The designs are pretty hip too. Check it out here - https://www.paperlesspost.com/flyer

Hit me up with any questions about the product.

I think you were downvoted for self-promo. FWIW, I appreciate your reply. I peeked. Your product looks very nice.

To better illustrate my challenge, here's an umbrella org to dozens of activities, of varying sizes and prerequisites.

http://www.sustainableballard.org

They need a whitelabel version of volunteermatch.org & meetup.com hybrid.

Friends only events on facebook are phenomenal.

It's much much easier than having to find out someone's email or phone number that you might not have.

And while I haven't organized a large open event, I do enjoy using facebook for attending them.

Is there really no good “just the events” app or site?

Personally I hear about the things I want to attend anyway, but I have the same feeling of not knowing nonetheless.

Like public events? or your private events inbox? I think Eventbrite/Meetup has a browsable public event list.

Sure, but they lack users.

If one of my friend groups introduced a new platform, I’d have that one + Facebook. If five of my friends introduced new platforms I’d probably have 6 platforms.

Aside from that, a lot of the alternative platforms aren’t really better than Facebook. I’m on discord for instance, but they also make a living of my personal data.

https://www.facebook.com/local/

That could be a killer app if Facebook gives it love.

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