there might be a difference in public perception: zuckerberg built his platform in the first place, so he's got a legitimate claim to destroy it in whatever way he seems fit (even if that's not really true). musk just walzed in; his aquisition looks like a hostile takeover and now seems a bit clueless about how to proceed ("20$ too much? how about 8?").
All of this seems to assume what people care about right now is what matters. The news cycle will move on in a couple weeks. That's when the real test will be for how much people really give a shit.
What's your source for popularity and does it do a breakdown by demographics advertisers are most interested in? Because I think that tells a very different story from "still most popular with boomers". Their earnings and stock price also tell a different story from "still most popular".
Just go through the list of most popular Twitter users and ask yourself where else are they going to go?
I personally wouldn't gamble the farm on corporation ad spending's adherence to social justice if those eyeballs are all in one place... at least long term.
At least FB has to compete with messaging apps and Instagram/TikTok. Twitter doesn't have a good #2.
It's probably a mistake to take the emotional outrage news cycles over the next month (or 3) as much more than the exact thing people will keep going back to Twitter for... ironically this outrage at Musk is the exactly what drives people to use Twitter.
> And no I don't think I need to support such a statement with a source. I'm sure you can find one.
What I've found is Facebook is not popular with young people: the audience many advertisers are the most interested in. The stock market is certainly not happy with their latest results. So sure, I can easily find a source that says Facebook is still the most popular platform. The details matter. Is it growth in Asia that's keeping their numbers up while US users shrink? Are they failing to attract young people? Have they lost users among the HN demographics? These details matter if you want the actual story.
> One area where Meta showed promise was in adding to Facebook’s massive user base
> Facebook has 2.93 billion monthly active users. 1.98 billion daily active users. That was up from 1.97 billion three months ago.
> Facebook has 264 million monthly active users in the United States and Canada alone. The majority of Facebook’s users belong to the 25 to 34 age group.
> Twitter has 206 million daily active users.
> TikTok has 1 billion monthly active users (MAU’s).
Facebook is going through a massive pivot and spending a wild amount of $$ on the Metaverse. All tech stocks are down. So I wouldn't put too much weight on stock price.
The other major thing is how Apple changed ad tracking works which reduce ad prices by 20% on average. That's a major decline in revenue for any company ("Advertising represented 98.2% of the company’s total revenue"). But YoY revenue only declined by 4%.
Good to see you finally backing up your claims with sources. The first source is paywalled though.
Yes user-wise they do seem to be doing fine, but I'd like to know where the growth is happening. That's important.
The 2nd source has some interesting demographics, but unfortunately doesn't include growth which would be the most interesting to me.
Very interesting that their largest user base by far is now in India, which I hinted at before. I suspect much of their growth from their latest earnings report is from that region of the world. Which also helps explain why ad revenue is down. Note also that ad reach in India is a very low 30% compared to the UK at 60% or Mexico over 80%. They didn't give numbers for the US. But if a lot of the growth is in India with such a low ad reach, that doesn't bode well for ad revenue.
Facebook also seems to be failing at attracting the young demographic from the west that advertisers love. As their core user base ages it will be interesting to see if they can maintain the interest of advertisers. I think Instagram is going to prop them up for a while. But it wouldn't surprise me at all if Facebook starts to become less important to advertisers, who will quickly move to wherever their target audience spends the most time.
Either way, just because FB is doing fine user wise doesn't mean that folks on HN who threatened to quit FB didn't actually go ahead and do that. If every HN user quit FB in one day, I don't think it would even show up on any chart.
> doesn't mean that folks on HN who threatened to quit FB didn't actually go ahead and do that.
Of course it doesn't? Who cares. I deleted my account too but that doesn't mean much.
I'm highly skeptical this outrage cycle will go on for long enough to seriously impact their userbase. Absent a proper competitor to Twitter. I've been part of enough internet boycotts of them to be cynical about their odds.
Also I'm not sure why you're having trouble finding Facebook data... just google it if you care so much about dismissing their obvious dominance. And WSJ paywall is easily bypassable.
Don't mistake a stagnant market for a dying one. If stagnant equalled death then Japan's economy would have been poor long ago.
> I'm not having trouble finding Facebook data. Did you get that idea from me asking you to back up your own claims?
You've asked me repeatedly about geographic and demographic data that Facebook (and plenty of 3rd party data mining sites) post publicly. If you actually care just compare it to other sites and make your own judgement calls.
If Facebook was really dying in the west then we'd be hearing about it. You seem to be using anecdotal data, in my life everyone I know hates Facebook but at least 75% of them use it... especially 90% of the non-technical ones who tend to be the best ad targets. Maybe you're not talking to enough regular people?
I asked you to back up your claims with sources. That's pretty common here, and also in scientific circles. We aren't your research assistants so if you want your claims to be taken seriously and discussed in detail, expect to give your sources.
I didn't claim Facebook is dying in the West. That's you putting words in my mouth.
And at the same time, any of his company's accomplishments are often attributed to him. You become an idol so you receive the good and the bad feedback.
It was a different time, "CEO of an unsuccessful tech company" wasn't a person you had to have an opinion on. And then once Apple became successful with iPods and iPhones, their business model was "give us money in exchange for this neat thing," which is sort generally likeable and also opt-in (technically Twitter is opt in, I guess, but all the news reporters take it very seriously for some reason, so it tends to impose even if you don't opt in).
I think it's because so many of Apple's customers idolized him. He was seen as a hero that could do no wrong, and all the poor decisions that Apple made were somehow someone else's fault. Even when I saw people complaining that Apple was making things harder for developers, Steve's name was not mentioned.
I really don’t think Jobs would have created and maintained a presence through social media - I don’t think he needed or desired the attention like Musk does... But anyway, who can ever know.
Steve was almost universally mocked/hated by anyone that didn't use Apple products. He was also had an ornery personality that didn't mesh well with many.
That’s mostly it. He got his share of criticism but it was almost entirely for what he did in his official capacity at Apple and he didn’t seem to crave the limelight or expect to influence works affairs anything like Musk, Zuckerberg, etc. do. The changing the world talk was mostly about making computers people wanted to use, and if you disagreed on whether they did that it wasn’t something which you needed to spend any time thinking about.
