Anti-social Network?
Some of my "quick takes" on social networks, particularly Facebook in 2020. Please take this with a pinch of salt.
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1. Facebook is now a mess.
TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, Medium are better than Facebook in each corresponding vertical.
The only competitive moats that Facebook has now are Network effect, Groups and User habits.
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2. Facebook is the most aggressive social network in terms of using NOTIFICATIONS to increase user engagement.
Everything, from Events to Reminders to Popular posts, etc, is now all being crammed into the little red bell. This is because Facebook has different teams working on each of these things competing with each other to be featured on notifications.
Checking notifications has been deeply ingrained in our brains as an instant dose of dopamine. We fear of missing out, therefore, checking that little red bell whenever we're bored makes us feel good, even though 99% of these notifications are trivial or just plainly stupid - come on, stop inviting me to like your pages. (1% left are about Đảo Mèo)
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3. The White bell experiment.
I decided to counter this effect by turning off all notifications, for the first time in 10 years, I didn’t receive any notifications within 6 days straight, something should be considered normal on my Twitter or Instagram. So you could see how aggressive Facebook is with its habit-building weapon - NOTIFICATION.
And not surprisingly, when those doses of dopamine were gone with a WHITE bell, Facebook truly feels like a mess.
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4. 50 shades of Personalization.
All social networks have newsfeeds that are recommended by AI. The degree of personalization in the newsfeed varies from network to network.
Tiktok has the least personalized feed imo, think about it, most of us hit like on cat videos, boys hit like on sexy girls, girls hit like on hot boys, therefore, we share pretty much the same feed.
On the other hand, the question of which network has the most personalized feed among those is tougher but I would say it’s Instagram. Since Instagram only allows people who you have decided to follow to be shown up on your feed. Facebook is pretty much the same but some random guys can still appear on your feed due to shares from your friends, Instagram doesn’t even have the share button, which makes it feels so “pure” to use.
Twitter, Youtube, and Medium fall somewhere in the middle of the personalization spectrum by throwing a balanced mix of suggestions from posts of the one who you have followed with those who you might be interested in.
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5. A Mess
But regardless of the personalization levels, as long as you can build a good feed, you’re on a good track, that’s what Facebook is lacking right now. Whenever I browse TikTok, on average, I would hit like on 4.5 out of 5 posts, almost every post on TikTok is a hit. That number might be reduced to 4/5 or 3/5 on Instagram and Twitter respectively. Youtube and Medium are slightly different since their feeds consisting of pages with multiple suggestions at once, however, I can always find 3-4 videos/posts that catch my attention per page.
However, when it comes to Facebook, the number of hit/miss ratio for me personally is about 0.5/5. It’s a mess with posts from pages, groups, friends in different formats - videos, texts, images talking about different topics. When I want to see something funny, I open Tiktok, beautiful - Instagram, intellectually stimulating - Twitter, but Facebook, hmm, I don't really know what to expect.
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Weirdly, Facebook has everything yet seems like an empty place. *at least for me*.
Is that because Facebook's recommendation system sucks or is that just a reflection of my emptiness towards online relationships?
Do you feel the same? Lemme know in the comment.
Cheers!
Minh Phan 👋
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Images by Ben Fernley & Rihab Sony via Behance.