Posted on 03/04/2013 9:20:44 AM PST by upchuck
Facebook has made the startling admission that teenagers are becoming bored with the social networking giant.
Facing competition from younger, more agile and 'cooler' apps such as Snapchat and Instagram, Facebook fears its long-term business could be harmed.
And as Facebook approaches its tenth anniversary the firm published its annual 10-K report last month revealing that its younger users are increasingly turning away from the multi-billion dollar business.
Published last month, the annual company report states, 'We believe that some of our users, particularly our younger users, are aware of and actively engaging with other products and services similar to, or as a substitute for, Facebook.
'For example, we believe that some of our users have reduced their engagement with Facebook in favor of increased engagement with other products and services such as Instagram.
'In the event that our users increasingly engage with other products and services, we may experience a decline in user engagement and our business could be harmed.'
The sobering admission that they need to sharpen their public image comes as Facebook Director of Product Blake Ross announced in scathing terms why he was leaving the social networking powerhouse.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
No problem. They’ll just synthesize a few hundred million more fake users; Wall Street will love them all over again.
I have never used it much, maybe every six weeks go on to see if extended family have posted pictures of kids that I have not seen.
But about a year ago they changed their format so that even more regular users started disliking it. One cannot go on and just find what is personally interesting, now the screen is filled with postings from the most prolific people with really dull things. It is an Easter Egg hunt to find what one wants.
Obviously, the most prolific posters with every darn picture of their cat, their kid, etcetera, posted five times a day, are not going to be very interesting.
oh well, every fad has its demise. the bigger the fad, the more sudden the demise
Indeed. It doesn’t even have to be big any more. The attention span of the public does nothing but grow shorter; the relatively low cost to entry of these enterprises which are basically just software means that the next different (not necessarily better, and in some cases like Instagram, bafflingly worse) thing is always being perfected in somebody else’s dorm room.
Here’s an idea ... go after the older folks who actually **CONTROL** the money!
Here Here!!!
Oh, baloney. Have been using FB for years to keep up with family and friends. Believe it or not but I kept up with FreeRepublic the last time it was offline. Most of the ones I keep up with are conservatives and I can read news on there sooner than here. If you do not like it, then do not use it.
BUMP!
They aren’t getting bored (although they do have a short attention span, which is why they like “twitter” with it’s 140-character limits, and Tumblr where they just “reblog” stuff from other people with single-line comments).
What they are getting is mad. They are mad at the invasion of privacy. They are mad that Facebook makes them jump through hoops to get notifications from their friends and from businesses they like (having to build interest lists).
They are mad that Facebook spams their friends with e-mails saying that they are “following pages”, and showing advertising pages falsely implying that they are following THOSE pages.
They are mad that Facebook has started turning their system into a for-profit enterprise.
And they might like Instagram now, but wait until they figure out that Instagram has claimed full usage rights for EVERY PICTURE that you post, including for advertising or sales purposes. In other words, you post an Instagram picture of yourself, they can sell it to an Ad agency, who can use your picture in print media somewhere without your knowledge.
I met the person that was heading the development of their mobile application prior to the IPO. They told me that Facebook was having a lot of trouble monitizing the mobile application. I wish I had shorted the stock after the IPO.
Facebook and the rest of these companies that do social networking need to focus their attention on the economy. They need to construct cool tools to promote business and to help young people start a business because at the end of the day if the younger generation start companies and make money they have money to spend.
A lot of my friends, in the over 60 age group, are absolutely hooked on Facebook.
It is my hope that the teens and twenty-somethings move on and leave it to the adults. I love keeping in touch with extended family, being able to see pics of my cousin’s newborn and updates on achievements of each other’s kids. I can do without the duck-faced cleavage shots of pre-teens and the “look how cool I am using the F-word all over the place” adolescents. And yes, I finally figured out how to remove all that from my newsfeed!
My oldest son deleted his account over a year ago. He likes privacy and anonymity. Most of the males his age have accounts, but they do not post. I think they have been burned and caught doing things they shouldn’t. Hah! The females are more likely to have accounts and to use them.
A few weeks ago, there was a Facebook page created called True Confessions of Blah HS. It was full of some bad stuff about teens at our sons’ school. The school admin found out about it and asked Facebook to shut it down due to the bullying nature of the posts. Facebook complied. The same thing happened at multiple schools in the city. So there are users. My sons had seen the posts and had to tell me about them as soon as they walked through the door that day. They were disappointed that I did not get to see more posts because all that was left were Tweets of posts copied from the Facebook page.
Earlier in the school year, there was a fight between some athletes from one sport versus athletes from another sport. The brainiacs were recorded by multiple bystanders. The videos were posted on Facebook and Twitter. Of course, the videos were used to suspend participants. But the entertainment value for these thugs was great. I don’t think any of them killed their Facebook accounts or their Twitter accounts afterward. Even moms of the fighters had the videos on their phones to show other moms. I have yet to see any of these videos, but one of the boys who was suspended is supposed to show me what he has on his phone. He is proud that he kicked the butt of this older punk.
I have a fair number of 14 and 15 yer olds on my friend list, they are friends of my daughter. I have noticed none of them post anywhere near as much as they used to post. I read more from their mothers than I do from them.
The youngest ones I have are relatives in their 20’s. Most have never posted very much. They are too busy with college and their own families. I do enjoy hearing from them when they do post. When my cousin was very Ill his wife kept us updated. That way we did not have to keep calling. It is amazing the conservative news that are posted.
Googlecommiefascist is evil, too.
The public attention whoredom of social networks like Facebook and twitter will exit with the current attention whore cultural fad.
Sooner or later people will recover their dignity and stop pretending their “friends” on facebook and twitter are real and stop pretending the details of their boring lives are worth telling their pretend friends about every day.
What’s a Facebook?
Does that mean fewer people taking pictures of themselves in the mirror making the “kissy-fish” faces?
I don’t have any relatives in their 20s. My daughter oly has 2 first cousins and they are both over 30. I do get a lot of conservative news/information and have a number of friends who are also FReepers. I have a pretty active group from my HS graduating class, of which I am about the most conservative of the very few conservatives in that group, but we all agreed many years ago (long before the internet) that politics would not ruin our friendships and that has pretty much worked for the past 35 years.
I primarily use it for local news. I live in a very rural county and “local” TV (and most radio) news is from either 100 miles away or a different state. It comes in real handy for information abut local going-on, or as I’m looking at right now, keeping tabs on the so-and-so that is trying to burn down the county - 58 arson fires since mid-Novemeber, including 5 this weekend.
While it can be annoying, Facebook definitely has its good points.
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