How Facebook keeps getting more addictive

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/04/facebook_news_feed_edgerank_facebook_algorithms_facebook_machine_learning.single.html

by kjhughes • 12 years ago

59 30 12 years ago

slate.com

spacemanmatt• 12 years ago

I wonder if the algorithms might reveal how they've become only more repellant to me over time.

smrtinsert• 12 years ago

And everyone in my network as well.

cliveowen• 12 years ago

I was wondering if it would be possible for Facebook to fake their usage numbers. I mean, its valuation is closely tied to the number of users and not so long ago everyone thought Facebook was close to saturation, now suddenly they managed to increase the number of users. How can a stockholder know if the numbers they publish are real? It looks to me that it would be possible to increase revenue while the number of users stays flat, so that's not a useful measure.

danso• 12 years ago

Sorry, but this is a blatant begging of the question:

- "not so long ago everyone thought Facebook was close to saturation"

- "now suddenly they managed to increase the number of users"

Maybe "everyone" was wrong? In any case, faking such numbers on a large scale would require a decent-sized conspiracy among at least a couple of department heads. Also, it would be quite illegal. And, being a digital thing, very easy for someone to prove.

However, it's possible that the way they characterize numbers has changed, but those details would presumably be in the official filings and financial reports. For example, in recent years, the newspapers audit circulation bureau has changed readership numbers to include categories of web users, not just print circulation. And even before the web, the numbers included an estimated number of readers who read non-bought copies of a paper (i.e., papers left at the coffee shop and passed around).

So there could be different standards of counting...in fact, that's a much easier, more legal way of doing things before you start maliciously faking stats.

andrenotgiant3• 12 years ago

Facebook is pretty thorough with its explanations of Daily Active Users (DAU) measurements in its SEC filings:

"Daily Active Users (DAUs). We define a daily active user as a registered Facebook user who logged in and visited Facebook through our website or a mobile device, or took an action to share content or activity with his or her Facebook friends or connections via a third-party website or app that is integrated with Facebook, on a given day. We view DAUs, and DAUs as a percentage of MAUs, as measures of user engagement."

Going back to the first SEC Filing from July 2012. There is ONE KEY DIFFERENCE in definition of a DAU.

Jul 2012 DAU: "...or took an action to share content or activity... ...via a third-party website that is integrated with Facebook." Ref: http://investor.fb.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-12-325...

Nov 2013 DAU: "...or took action to share content or activity... ...via a third-party website or app that is integrated with Facebook." Ref: http://investor.fb.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1326801-13-31&...

Spooky23• 12 years ago

Not really. It just requires you to look the other way, or not be as effective as needed in your anti-spam campaigns.

Wasn't there a story just days ago that reported that a very significant population of Twitter users have never Tweeted? Last year NPR had significant coverage of companies that wrangled and sold armies of fake twitter followers. (That sort of info is much more transparent with Twitter than Facebook)

Why is it impossible to believe that any of the thousands of possible entities aren't farming phony Facebook accounts?

at-fates-hands• 12 years ago

> In any case, faking such numbers on a large scale would require a decent-sized conspiracy among at least a couple of department heads.

Actually all you would need is a low level manager, a decent hacker (or employee) with skills and a small bot army to inflate the numbers. Considering there's apparently over 83 million fake or duplicate accounts, faking those numbers would be fairly trivial.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/02/tech/social-media/facebook-fak...

hagbardgroup• 12 years ago

I don't think we know. They should be audited. Eventually, when the general ad fraud scandal [1][2] starts to really harm a lot of companies, there will be pressure to audit usage metrics more stringently.

Supposedly though FB has held itself (and FBX, which is overall a great product, in particular) as 'fraud-free.'[3] Dunno about that, especially since faking likes is trivial. Anyone who knows how to operate a search engine can do it in less than five minutes.

[1]http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2014/03/23/online-advertisings-cris... [2]http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2329878/Facebook-Ad-Fra... [3]http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-26/how-facebook...

illicium• 12 years ago

They've already started using tricks like sending "Do you know ______?" push notifications that can't be turned off to try to get people to open the FB app more. It's not faking usage numbers, but I'm sure logging in just to clear a spammy notification counts towards user activity metrics, which directly ties into ad revenue.

omonra• 12 years ago

I have a different method. I only friend people I know in real life, read FB newsfeed in chronological order (FB Purity handles that) and I unfollow those who post dumb shit.

Moneta_xi• 12 years ago

That's basically what do too. One change is my night job is in nightlife. So I've set up a group that I dump all those people. So I can unfollow them and they only see what I want them to see on my wall.

gadders• 12 years ago

> As much work and data—your data—as Facebook feeds into its targeted advertising, it works at least as hard at figuring out which of your friends’ posts you’re most likely to want to see each time you open the app.

No it doesn't. I want to see everything, in date order. I can hide crap I don't want to see myself.

jonnathanson• 12 years ago

In theory, sure. In practice, all that stuff adds up very quickly.

Let's assume you have ~500 friends. Assume each of those friends posts at least once a day. That's 500 posts per day that you'd need to sift through, in chronological order. There's no way most people would be able to do that, maintaining a clear mental backlog day in and day out, and consistently find the comments they like. This would be a serious needle-in-the-haystack problem. The brute force of one's time, reading speed, and strength of intent might be able to solve it for maybe a few days before giving up.

And those numbers are simplistic estimates. If anything, they are spectacularly conservative.

I'm not suggesting that FB's methods always get things right. There's a LOT of room for improvement. But some automated sorting process is better than its complete absence, as much as we'd like to think it's not. Most people can't process as much information as comes through a typical news feed on a typical week.

Now, what about email? Isn't that similar? Don't some of us, especially in busy offices, get hundreds of emails a day and manage just fine? Sure. The difference is that most email is pre-"selected" for us, on account of the sender's intent that we read it. We're not just being bombarded by every stray thought that occurs to senders. We're not being cc'ed on all the email our contacts send. A completely unsorted Facebook newsfeed would be a bit like getting cc'ed on every email sent by your network, every day.

djloche• 12 years ago

This is one of the differences between Twitter and Facebook. Facebook secretly decides what they want you to see. Twitter's filter is very straight forward. Follow an account to get their tweets. If you follow more than one account, you'll see the @replies between the accounts you follow.

conradfr• 12 years ago

Is it an algorithm that randomly revert my choice to display my newsfeed in chronological order ?

rootedbox2• 12 years ago

instagram and other sites that use Facebook login count for DAU.

So is Facebook becoming more addictive or just more integrated.

mathattack2• 12 years ago

Amongst my peer group, it seems like activity is down except for a core group (<5%) of very heavy users. Now it could be that Facebook is just zeroing in on the people I have tended to like more, and this becomes self fulfilling, but generally my peers don't seem to be using it as much.

vailripper• 12 years ago

Same here. I'd be more interested in seeing how long an average user stays on facebook when they visit. Myself, I might log on several times a day, but only spend maybe a minute on each visit...it just doesn't feel as engaging as it used to.

rhizome• 12 years ago

It sounds to me like they're just equating touching the site with "doing stuff." I'll bet dollars to donuts that if they split out no-shares from sharers (or even segments concerning likes, comments, actual shares, etc.) it would look a lot worse for them.

Gepser• 12 years ago

I log in with my facebook account at many places but I don't check my facebook everyday.

andrenotgiant3• 12 years ago

Wrong: "The numbers of DAUs, MAUs, mobile DAUs, mobile MAUs, and mobile-only MAUs discussed in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, as well as ARPU, do not include users of Instagram unless they would otherwise qualify as such users, respectively, based on their other activities on Facebook" http://investor.fb.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1326801-13-31&...

DanielBMarkham• 12 years ago

If you care about the time you spend online, you owe it to yourself to start actively installing and using programs that take the addictiveness out of content. F.B.Purify is a good start for Facebook users.

callesgg• 12 years ago

I kind of doesn't, at least for me.

And also Facebook seams to have no idea what I want to see. As all I see when I log in is mostly stuff about people I don't know. I would much rather see everything and filter it myself.

buzaga41• 12 years ago

as someone who is not a fan of Facebook but uses, I've got to admit I noticed they did something and I've been using the site more recently, and that it's better recently.

Mainly, I've increased the number of news sites I 'like' and I'm getting my news much more through FB recently, I already used to 'unfollow' people who post worthless stuff frequently, so I'd guess my Timeline is at a good 'configuration'

I've been tuning down my consumption of mainstream media greatly and have been following more `real`, `credible` journalism, as well as more 'community' content e.g.: friends bands, friends projects, local initiatives, fun/comedy pages that refutes backward thinking and political discussions relevant to my area of the world, this is also making me less engaged in, for example, Hacker News because I'm becoming less interested in US matters etc, so, I've got to say that my views on the Bad of Facebook are softening and I'm seeing some Good, although it feels a bit weird to say this :)

Obviously it's not all flowers tho, as much as I may be getting 'bubbled', the same people that have views that I see as backwards are probably getting their own confirmation-bias version...

SixSigma• 12 years ago

Each time you log in, Facebook’s algorithms choose from about 1,500 possible posts to place at the top of your News Feed.

No it doesn't. Facebook Purity re-orders my timeline by most recent.

No ads, no games, no Trending, no nonsense. The way you would have Facebook if you could choose.

http://www.fbpurity.com/

argumentum• 12 years ago

For a website associating itself with "purity", they've done a great job dirtying up their website.

How Facebook keeps getting more addictive

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