Facebook bends the rules of audience engagement to its advantage

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/business/facebook-bends-the-rules-of-audience-engagement-to-its-advantage.html?src=busln&_r=0

by hvo • 10 years ago

114 114 10 years ago

nytimes.com

necessity• 10 years ago

How is this news?

adrenalinelol• 10 years ago

Apparently Facebook is so good at user engagement, they can get people to spend time talking about how much time is spent on the platform ;)

arcticfox2• 10 years ago

As a company spokeswoman, Jessie Baker, told me: “The time people spend on our site is a good measure of whether we’re delivering value to them.”

Eh, the same argument could be made by Philip Morris or a casino: "The time people spend using our products is a good measure of whether we're delivering value to them."

Aelinsaar2• 10 years ago

Exactly. Usage patterns and "deriving value" seem like very different beasts.

cryptoz2• 10 years ago

Yes; in fact, this statement would have made a lot more sense:

"The time people spend using our products is a good measure of whether they're delivering value to us."

cb182• 10 years ago

Well, value in sating a compulsive or addictive behavior, but not all values are equal.

cwilkes• 10 years ago

At a "big data" talk Yahoo gave one of the keynotes where they asked which one of the two email samples had the "most engagement" Surprise surprise it was the one with the confusing text on it -- people were clicking on it to see what the heck it meant.

But to the Yahoo guys that meant that email was better as it got more clicks. And I suppose it is better if that's how your bonus is constructed.

AznHisoka• 10 years ago

Delivering value could just mean giving them dopamine in the short term. That's value.

tn132• 10 years ago

I think Philip Morris would not be wrong here. The problem here is the difference in values that individuals have. A lot of us might think of wasting time of Facebook or Casino is a bad idea but for many people it would not be the case. Facebook is essentially competing with Snapchat, Youtube, TV for time and if Facebook wins it means they are offering more value than others. People aren't going to read more books or get new skills if Facebook deliberately rations their user's time.

natrius• 10 years ago

Yes, there are lots of satisfying addictions competing for our time. That doesn't absolve any of them for the harm they cause.

Anyone selling ads is trying to addict you to get you to see more ads. It's immoral.

panic• 10 years ago

This talk "Is Anything Worth Maximizing?" is worth a watch: http://nxhx.org/maximizing/

zerotimer3• 10 years ago

That link doesn't work. Can you verify?

Edit: Its working now.

gumby• 10 years ago

You have an excellent nose for appropriate metaphors. That's awesome!

caylus• 10 years ago

Or the DMV. "The time people spend at our office is a good measure of whether we're delivering value to them."

twelvechairs• 10 years ago

Or a hospital.

bko3• 10 years ago

Some people do enjoy smoking and/or gambling. Not everyone is a victim being exploited

Sone7• 10 years ago

Some people do enjoy heroin and/or being a slave. Not everyone is a victim being exploited.

In other words, I really don't know what you're trying to add to the conversation.

danhak2• 10 years ago

And some people are legitimately addicted and unable to stop despite their sincere desire. In many cases, companies engineer products and services to be as addictive as possible. The techniques used by casinos, for instance, are well known.

This is not an argument for regulation, prohibition or anything like that. Merely a rebuttal to the falsehood that nobody is being "exploited" by such companies and that "value" is being created. In many cases value is being destroyed.

nihonde2• 10 years ago

I will never understand why advertising businesses (and that's what Facebook is) fail to see their fundamental value proposition: ROI on ad spend.

Jessie Baker's comment fails in two respects: (1) eyeballs and engagement time is not a "good measure" without correlating to ROI for advertisers, and (2) FB's value proposition is not aimed at users, but rather at advertisers.

brandnewlow• 10 years ago

ROI-based measurement is the only sane way to measure the effectiveness of a marketing channel.

But if ad companies are measured based on ROI, then they can be easily compared against other channels. That's the last thing any ad company wants.

So to make a great deal of money as a marketing channel you need to invent a new metric, one that your company is very good at delivering on. Then you convince the market that metric is one they should care about.

It's no different from how SaaS companies regularly invent new "spaces" that enterprises need solutions for (marketing automation, lead scoring, video marketing etc) or even how real estate agents in major metro areas regularly rename neighborhoods and redraw area boundaries. If you can make the market, define a new reality that your customers have to step into, you increase the odds that your customers will measure success in a way that favors your strengths.

rhizome3• 10 years ago

"Value" is pretty much the most banal dimension possible. Total red flag euphemism.

kelukelugames• 10 years ago

I would be happier if I spent less time on facebook. It is a drug for me.

wfactor• 10 years ago

Sadly this estimate seems on point. I think the jump in time spent is largely because of Instagram though - there are many who check both daily

jheriko• 10 years ago

Why is this remotely bad?

“They’re doing a tremendous job of finding ways to keep people on the site”

Could also be phrased

"Facebook provides such great value to its unpaying customers that they are willing to spend 50 minutes per day interacting with their services"

... a spin/PR/sales person could word it better I'm sure

devishard• 10 years ago

Please don't feed the turd-polishers.

electic• 10 years ago

This should be a wake up call. This site really doesn't deliver anything of value. It doesn't really make you more social and it doesn't really connect you to people in the real world. So basically you spend 16,800 minutes a year on Facebook. That is 11 days of your life lost a year.

zappo2938• 10 years ago

I spend 50 minutes a day on Hacker News.

n1l• 10 years ago

let's not talk about reddit then

intrasight2• 10 years ago

Hacker News is for me a news and discussion portal. Reddit is something that might show up from a Google search. I block most of the distracting internet during the day - except FB and HN - so of course those two get the majority of my allocated distracted time. I should measure it, but I'd not be at all surprised if they each got an hour a day.

Mendenhall4• 10 years ago

Oh it surely delivers value for the creator:) many are very happy to get data mined and manipulated and dont see how it could be a problem at all.

lazzlazzlazz2• 10 years ago

I get value from Facebook just like I get value from Hacker News, Reddit, Messenger, etc.

It literally helps me connect to people in the real world - I just discovered Tycho's new album through there, planned a trip to a festival with friends there, just filled up my weekend, and discovered a new area I'm going to go rock climbing.

If you are getting no value from Facebook, you're probably not using it correctly - which you can change.

_RPM• 10 years ago

You should be proud of that. It's exactly what FB wants you to do.

wslh• 10 years ago

I suggest you to read Momo by Michael Ende[1], it is basically about this topic. Obviously, not only Facebook is guilty.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_(novel)

ojbyrne• 10 years ago

I wonder how much of an overlap there is with "waiting in line." because that's a big use case for me.

pmalynin• 10 years ago

Yeah not gonna happen. Literally the only thing I use it for is chat.

x0054• 10 years ago

While people are spending more and more time on FB, I find it that there is less and less original content uploaded. It's all likes and re-shares.

vvpan• 10 years ago

It's reverberation chamber.

nosuchthing• 10 years ago

It's a 'go to' reflex, like TV.

jsm386• 10 years ago

Facebook is actively trying to deal with that truth: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-07/facebook-s...

brianstorms• 10 years ago

Facebook gets about 10 minutes of my time each day, thanks to heavily muting many friends' posts, FB Purity, and uBlock.

Meanwhile, Tesla has 120 minutes of my time each day. I'm fine with that.

Mendenhall4• 10 years ago

I am not someone who uses facebook, if you would not mind could you explain briefly what you mean by "muting friends posts"?

koala_advert• 10 years ago

You can "unfollow" people that you have added, so that their posts no longer show up on your news feed. You still have them added as a friend, you just don't see their posts without visiting their profile page.

xirdstl• 10 years ago

That includes Messenger. Is Messenger just IM? If so, that estimate makes more sense. Do they serve ads there too?

kristopolous• 10 years ago

Knowing it's within Facebook's financial interest to self-report this unverifiable number as high as they can, I wonder what's included.

Are they only including when a user has the mobile app or browser window open and is engaging with the content or are they measuring the total time the page is open regardless of whether it's being interacted with or not? [1]

Are they only including engaging directly on facebook.com or would looking at say, powered-by-facebook comments on a third party site add to this tally?

If that's game, what other things are open to this interpretation?

I'm not saying these metrics are fraudulent, just underspecified.

---

1. Under the more permissive metrics, I could be considered "on" stackoverflow, github, or wikipedia perhaps 4 hours a day - because I, like most, don't judiciously close every browser window immediately after I'm done. Although I certainly visit these sites a lot, tallying the numbers like this is probably disingenuous.

tmuir• 10 years ago

Tons of services have "log in with Facebook" features. Last I checked, Tinder required a Facebook account. I wonder if those logins are included?

Mendenhall4• 10 years ago

All i think of when I see the word facebook is who would use that data mining, censoring, manipulative product. To each their own but I think many dont see whats going on with it.

amelius• 10 years ago

many dont see whats going on with it

I think we need some realistic examples of what could go wrong. To many, online privacy issues are a bit too hypothetical and abstract.

gvurrdon• 10 years ago

Indeed; a common response I encounter if I complain about Facebook is along the lines of "I don't see why it matters that FB knows stuff about me, and I think I get more value from them than they possibly could get from me for the trivial information they learn about me."

Mendenhall4• 10 years ago

A prime example is on the front page of hacker news right now IMO.

http://www.cnet.com/news/facebooks-newest-privacy-problem-fa...

scoot• 10 years ago

"Facebook Has 50 Minutes of Your Time Each Day"

FaceBook has none of my time ever. (Unless we're talking about their contributions to OSS.)

ruffrey• 10 years ago

Considering the widespread use of their open source projects like react, I'd say we have 50 minutes of THEIR time each day

spicyj• 10 years ago

Certainly 50 minutes of mine! More than half of my days go to open-source React.

notliketherest3• 10 years ago

Kill your Facebook. Seriously. You'll feel so liberated. And showing people pictures of your recent life when you meet them or email them is so fun and you get so much more attention and conversation out of it. Best decision of my life!

riebschlager• 10 years ago

Absolutely. I deactivated mine back in January and I most definitely do not miss it.

satori99• 10 years ago

I have never had an account. The very idea of it was repugnant to me, even when it was launched. I think it mostly because of the must-use-real-name thing, which was the complete opposite of the way I used the Internet at the time.

But also because I like being un-contactable by people I have known in the past.

Unfortunately, my sister got a lot of "what happened to your brother?" messages, but they have mostly stopped now.

Facebook still creeps me out.

lazzlazzlazz2• 10 years ago

I deactivated my Facebook account for over three years, reactivating about 18 months ago. There is an initial feeling of liberation, but I ended up regretting it.

I realize now that I should have just shaped my use to fit my needs: unfriend or unfollow people I don't care to follow, write more messages rather than scrolling through the newsfeed, and join events and groups more deliberately. Deactivating was just an easy way to avoid the headaches rather than going through the work of curating what I wanted to see.

Now I actually use it to keep in touch with people I care about, rather than just pretend that's what I'm doing. I missed out on some things during my three years with Facebook off, and although I learned so much from having done it, I wouldn't do it again.

jupiter90000• 10 years ago

Everyone has different experiences with this stuff. I deactivated for a while, then went back and 'curated' the hell out of it. After I did that, I realized the only interactions I was getting from it for a while could mostly be had via other websites, in-person, by phone and text, and deactivated a few months back again. Although yesterday, I logged in solely to download a picture my wife wanted I had of her then instantly deactivated again, if that counts.

Since I weaned myself down majorly by curating the content severely for a while, almost no one had been griping to me about 'why aren't you on facebook?' when I stopped using it this last time. And I feel even less compelled to go back on. I enjoy having a sense of privacy, free time to do other things (I have that 50 minutes a day/whatever to do other stuff with now), and I think a better respect for the value of the precious time left in my life. I hope I never get drawn back in to using it.

elliotec• 10 years ago

I mean, it sounds okay to be liberated, but what if you just don't spend 50 minutes on it per day? Also, what about the argument of keeping in touch with all your high school friends and distant relatives? What about all the things I would've found out on facebook that I'm now missing out on?

darkclarity• 10 years ago

Facebook doesn't just keep you in contact with old friends, it encourages you to stalk their public facing persona. There's none of the mystery and personal discovery that creates the bonds of friendship. It's not real friendship. It's like being a super fan to an amateur musician - a one way street with occasional responses.

The fear of missing out? That's just one of the many addictive strings that Facebook tugs to manipulate you. The things that happen on Facebook don't matter. If something is important then it is far better to discover it outside of Facebook. In the end, nothing is that important.

There are other ways of keeping up with old friends and relatives. Listen to gossip from other friends and family. Keep in contact with them using email, telephone and post. If you don't maintain some link then they should be resigned to the past - until some event occurs to trigger a re-established connection.

notliketherest3• 10 years ago

I only keep in contact with 3 high school friends and generally call them once and awhile. And spend weekends with each other once or twice a year. Relatives send me cards and call on birthdays. See then about the same amount. Don't see a need to be constantly engaged with their lives.

bufordsharkley• 10 years ago

I didn't deactivate, but I made my profile link to my personal website and haven't logged in for a couple years.

optforfon• 10 years ago

I didn't have facebook all through college. A few years after I decided to get one and my social life blossomed. Now it's by far the most important piece of technology I use. I keep in touch with people all over the world - some who I met once in some distant country. So easy to hit up someone you haven't talked to in months. It's amazing

RottenHuman2• 10 years ago

Maybe it's because I'm old, but I do all this with email phone calls and text messages and it seems to me to do the job just fine.

What is the advantage of using Facebook to keep in touch with people that I'm missing?

tallanvor• 10 years ago

Not reading Facebook posts with any regularity can be a good way to improve your mood and not have to worry about what your life looks like compared to anyone else. But it's unfortunately now the biggest messaging app out there.

I switched to only having Messenger installed on my phone. If I really want to visit the site, I do so through the browser, and I post once or twice a year. I also have an extremely small list of friends on their compared to most people I know. This has let me strike the balance between being able to contact people easily and not feel like Facebook is a daily part of my life.

Kiro• 10 years ago

I spend many hours a day on Facebook and couldn't be happier.

kbart• 10 years ago

Why another extreme? I spend 30-60 min on FB just to check events and answer messages, I don't think that's a waste of time, because it's still the fastest/easiest way to maintain relations with many not-very-close people and get information of the local events. I don't post anything and usually don't read other's posts and I don't go by my real name. I think it's strange that every time discussion about Facebook pops-up, people usually assume that FB users waste immense amount of time on it.

zerotimer3• 10 years ago

I don't think we should expect Facebook to change. We need better tools that allow people to stay away from it (and other such distractions in future). We need tools that help people understand how to manage their internet time better. They need to understand what kind of emotional costs (which will vary a lot) are associated with extended FB usage. And such tools will ideally be browser addons.

Imagine a browser that I can configure based on my weekly goals. There are domains I want to avoid. There are domains where I most want to be (for that week). And some neutral domains like search engines. Maybe assign weights to these. Then over the week, browser reminds or guides us towards most productive behaviors. If our behavior is inconsistent with our initial goals, it assigns heavier penalties (like block domain for a week) for those negative domains.

There are many interesting implications once someone starts thinking about some of these options. But at this point, I don't see exciting innovation on this.

csydas• 10 years ago

Though I do find your intent admirable, I think that it's misplaced - the reason there's no innovation on this front is because these sorts of time management tools are entirely dependent on the self-control of the persons they are targeted for, self-control issues being the reason they're glued to Facebook in the first place.

While such a time management tool may benefit a small few, the majority of people at a computer just don't seem to care too much - heck, even today many users need to be compelled to install an adblocker and to keep their software up to date -- imagine trying to convince that user base to also restrict their ability to go places online voluntarily.

Change has to come from within as an actual want - you have to want to be running every day to lose weight, you have to want to practice every day to learn an instrument or a language, and the type of change you're discussing has to come from an internal want to actually disassociate from Facebook and its ilk. Right now it's not so much that people don't want Facebook so much as they're not sure what else to do - the centralization of the web into a few major hub websites has left a lot of people completely lost as to what being online can actually do for you. You can see this effect all over the place - just watch how many people will upvote a "betterment" thread on reddit or imgur filled with free learning links, but never actually take the time to follow through on these threads. The few that do are the exception, not the rule.

As great as it would be if we all learned a bit more self control, mindlessly browsing Facebook is the new "TV on in the background" and has been for awhile.

sthatipamala• 10 years ago

RescueTime does exactly this.

zerotimer3• 10 years ago

First of all, separate app isn't the same. Secondly, it just gives reports. That's a passive action. The "guide towards more productive behavior" part of my comment meant that actively tries to stop you from negative domains or push you towards better domains.

ihsw• 10 years ago

If they really want to dominate then it would be prudent for them to buy reddit and imgur.

Ileca2• 10 years ago

I still don't see ANY value in using facebook besides giving to the market my personal data. I just don't understand why this is so popular.

If I wanted to use a social network, I would use one where I can contact new people of interest, not the one I can talk with when I open my window but I won't because I use facebook.

Unklejoe• 10 years ago

The value for many people is:

- Being able to easily communicate with a large group of your friends at the same time

- Being able to contact old acquaintances who you otherwise wouldn't have been able to find

- Being able to finely control they way you present yourself to your peers

- Being able to easily coordinate events

...to name a few.

There are other ways to accomplish the same tasks, but Facebook is coherent and easy to use.

I personally don't use Facebook either, but I do see the value in it.

Ileca2• 10 years ago

Only your second point is valid to me and not worth the use of the system by itself. This is not worth the encapsulation around your acquaintances you are supposed to cultivate the relation face to face, not through a "wall" and mediocre public interactions.

There is a lot of means to communicate and coordinate things efficiently (it was already possible before facebook) and the "fine control" over your "present yourself" is either an illusion or proof of your superficiality. I think it is the point around what facebook was built: the superficiality of people and their need to show off everywhere and think of themselves as some public figure. I guess that's also why instagram and selfies are so popular. It's all about network connection, not about the meaningful content the network is supposed to carry.

kinkdr2• 10 years ago

I was never an active FB user, and it has been years since I deleted my account. On the other hand my wife is using it every now and then and I can see the entertainment value in it.

I know everybody loves to hate it, but I don't see it as being inherently worse than TV, or Reddit...

joelg• 10 years ago

People who love to hate Facebook love to hate TV and Reddit equally.

are_hem2• 10 years ago

the time spent looking through your FB feed to find something worth checking out largely contributes to it's dominance over time spent on twitter...

are_hem2• 10 years ago

is it really user engagement or the time you spend scrolling through your feed to find something worth checking out, that dwarfs the time spent on twitter?

heifetz• 10 years ago

People spend 5 hours on average watching tv, so Facebook has a long way to go! Seriously, is this really something to be proud of?

davidwparker• 10 years ago

Last year, I was spending roughly ~25 minutes / day on Facebook (according to Rescuetime). I've never had the app, or messenger on my phone. So on Chrome, I added News Feed Eradicator (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat...) and my usage dropped down to about 5 minutes / day (still more than necessary).

Unlike a lot of people here (it seems), I get a lot of real usage out of Facebook though. For example, it's the number one source of events for my favorite hobby / workout. I wouldn't really be connected to the community and know what events are going on if I didn't have it.

j_s• 10 years ago

A slightly less drastic / more tweakable extension: http://www.fbpurity.com/

I use it to delete game + app stories from the newsfeed; I will sheepishly admit I haven't disabled 'Deleted Friend Alerts' either.

dredmorbius• 10 years ago

Criticisms of FB notwithstanding (and it's interesting how that dominates this discussion), time-on-site is a horrible measure of "value added" to me.

I've found highly-directed, highly-filtered, low-noise, low-distraction envrionments are what give me return.

Interfaces and services like ... Books. A notebook. Index cards for noting thoughts and ideas. Tangibles which I can hold, flip through, sort, take outside, read in sunlight, and don't offer me the option of clicking over to see my feed or who's responded to me.

(And no, I don't have a FB account either, never have.)

AndrewKemendo• 10 years ago

It seems like in general massively scaled technology companies don't get much love on HN. Seems odd to me as so much of what is discussed on HN is how to massively scale your own technology company.

Is it that they become othered once they pass a certain size, or go public?

What gives?

I mean, I get it that people don't like the influence of VC and finance, but that's part of the game with scaled companies.

Facebook bends the rules of audience engagement to its advantage

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