Comment by snprbob86 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by snprbob86 | Hacker News Reader

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> Unfortunately, Facebook has played fast and loose with their user's trust

I just did an informal (ie verbal) poll over four non-technical, but intelligent friends. I said "Have you guys heard of Facebook Promoted Posts" 3 yeses and 1 no. Then I said to the yeses "Has it changed your Facebook experience in any way?" One friend said "Not that I know of" and the other two agreed.

The only people who are upset about this change are advertisers and geeks. Facebook isn't burning any bridges tweaking feed rankings in the exact same way Google doesn't burn any bridges when they tweak search result rankings. Advertisers aren't going to flee Facebook for the same reasons they haven't fled Google: Facebook and Google own the eyeballs. Advertisers go where the eyeballs are. Full stop.

This seems like a brilliant move for Facebook. Users see fewer posts by Pages. Facebook receives additional revenue. And the big spenders in advertising are so delighted with their increased impressions, that they are willing to spend even more. Seems strategically sound to me...

Anecdotal and unscientific in terms of not comparing apples to apples.

You would need to show your friends the posts they missed at best, or at least show a competing service, over the same set of messages, which isn't possible.

The fact that people aren't upset doesn't mean that the user experience is the same. Perhaps it's a bit shitier now, but they just don't know it, like a frog slowly boiling.

re: comparing to google, google can tweak algorithms, then users use bing _to search over the same data set_. That is competition, and Google must constantly be on top of things, so users who are happy with google, tend to know way more than users who are supposedly happy with facebook.

What this means is Facebook could very well be slowly boiling their users in order to get more cash, or you may be right and users really don't mind. If there were real competition to facebook, we would find out. Unfortunately, facebook doesn't want you to export your data so you can find out.

Even if you did export your data, you can't export your friends to a competing social network. The real reason there's no threat to Facebook is because of the network effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

The concept of network effect has been taught by B-school professors as a rule or law rather than a theory. Not enough research has been done to show how network effect can be broken up since it is just recently (last 10 years or so) been taught. 5 years ago, before Facebook started stealing MySpace’s users, you could have put the same wiki link and said the same thing.

One could even argue that Facebook is destroying their network effect by not allowing people to see all posts. The fact that Linkedin, Meetup, Twitter, heck even the new myspace all exist, there are lots of networks with varying degrees of network effects which could slowly take facebook share until the tipping point is crossed.

I’m not predicting facebook’s demise, rather I’m stating that network effects are important, but have not been proven to create a long term sustainable competitive advantage.

"... taught by B-school professors..."

Feeling a little pretentious today? Your point was valid, but your tone was off-putting.

I think we can all agree that the network effect exists, its only its power and longevity are what is really in question.

You've reached DH2 on Paul Graham's hierarchy of disagreement: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html . Please try responding to content, not tone.

There are two barriers to entry: the network effect, s.t. the utility I derive corresponds to the friends I have on the social network, and their utility derives partly from me being on the social network, so at a critical mass it's hard to justify going onto another social network.

The network effect kicks in at a certain critical point. If you created a really compelling social network and added the feature s.t. people could say, "import from facebook", choosing your facebook login/pw, then if enough people did this, critical mass would be reached. The network effect just states that this critical mass might take awhile to reach, but it's not impossible. Facebook disallowing you from exporting your data makes it so competing networks cannot reach that critical point quickly enough.

>"Not that I know of"

Well their experience has changed, and in ways they are not made aware of. Smacks of censorship, even if not politically motivated. There is danger in not knowing.

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