Facebook Loses Users, Satisfaction Higher at Google+ 274
benfrog writes "Facebook has lost what (by the standards of their userbase) is a modest number of users over the last six months, which is perhaps one of the causes of a fall in their stock price. In the meantime, a study shows that Google+ users are more satisfied with the site than Facebook users, who are (understandably) upset about the number of recent UI changes, the amount of advertising, and other elements, according to a statement accompanying the study. Figures also show dramatic growth in Google+ usage."
It's amazing.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Comment in subject idiocy (Score:4, Funny)
That's not even a sentence.
( :P )
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Re:Comment in subject idiocy (Score:5, Funny)
It's amazing that you're so new to this site that you don't understand that putting part of the comment in the subject line is meant to grab attention..
BAH. REAL INTERNET USERS KNOW THAT THE BEST WAY TO GRAB ATTENTION IS TO TYPE EVERYTHING IN CAPS AND BOLD.
FUCKIN NEWBS WITH THEIR DUMB-ASS SPLITTING THE COMMENT OUT - TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE
besides, exactly how does splitting the comment attract attention? i don't even know someone's done it until after i start reading their comment....
Hmmmm, yeah (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this like some sort of Google ad? I dunno. I like G+ too, but it is a little hard to use in the ways that you can use FB when people just don't do a lot with it. Maybe they'll hit some sort of critical mass? I'd like that, but...
Re:Hmmmm, yeah (Score:4, Insightful)
I have to agree. I like it fine, but it's not a full-on Facebook replacement, and I'm not much interested in unique visitors as a useful metric when 800 trillion people already have google accounts. Show me big numbers for user engagement. Then I'll gladly accept that people are actually using it as a Facebook replacement.
Re:Hmmmm, yeah (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, and Google Instant (where photos you take automatically upload to a private area) is the killer feature there - just that alone can be so helpful even if you don't circle anyone or use the other features.
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You're right, it is different, and I kinda like that. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.
I'm just not going to draw a line from a few lost Facebook users to some kind of Google+ migration... almost precisely for the reasons you mention. I got the feeling that's where the article submission was headed.
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STOP THE PRESS!!! Someone agreed with someone else on Slashdot. It's almost as if common sense prevailed.
Group hug everyone, c'mon you know you want to really.
I'm choking up, I really am.
Re:Hmmmm, yeah (Score:4, Insightful)
Google+ is a one way thing. You put a person in your circles. Then, if they post to public, you get their content in your feed. (Google+ also has the concept of private posts where you can post just to your circles instead of public). However, just circling someone gets you their public content. So Google+ is a great place to get content from content producers, interesting people, etc.
As opposed to following someone's blog, watching their twitter feed, subscribing to their podcast, etc.
Ya know what? I have my own life. There are only so many hours in the day I can spend on what other people are doing.
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You know what? SO what. It's not for you. I know, your massive entitlement complex brought on by getting far too much attention as a child makes you think everything is for you and for you're approval.
It is not.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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I didn't get much attention as a child and I have an entitlement complex. Explain that.
You're just a really annoying person generally?
Re:Hmmmm, yeah (Score:5, Interesting)
Why try to use it as a Facebook replacement? It isn't designed to directly compete. Facebook has a "two way" model (where two people have to agree to be 'friends')
Some of us are wishing to replace it maybe? Facebook has annoyed me many times more than google has. Site redesigns that I didn't like, privacy issues. For another, I'm facebook friends with more people than I want to be. Some of my relatives got really upset when they found out I was on facebook, was not friends with them, and had blocked them. People from high school who I didn't bother going to the 10 year reunion to see. Seems like most of my facebook friends are people I don't want any contact with. Meanwhile, most people I know aren't on google plus, and I haven't built up a pile of fake friends in it yet.
Maybe that's just me.
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'Keep me in the loop'
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmmmm, yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
... and that sounds like it is exactly as it should be.
The problem with facebook is not really facebook per-se—some people like it, it serves their needs, good for them.
The problem is when facebook becomes so overwhelmingly dominant that they are essentially the only viable choice for most people, meaning that people who don't like it (and they are legion) are basically goaded into using it anyway.
Ideally, there would be a range of services that are all popular, maybe even with content-transfer between them (I know, FB would royally freak, but ... from a user's point of view, this is ideal ... and the user's content does belong to the user, doesn't it ...?), allowing people to use the one they like best, and avoiding any one service from becoming too powerful.
Diversity is a good thing!
Re:Hmmmm, yeah (Score:4, Insightful)
They will hit critical mass because Google is leveraging their other markets. Facebook doesn't have Google maps, YouTube, the Chrome browser, g-mail, etc. Google is going to integrate all of its technology and because the applications are there, people will use it. Google will surround Facebook, and then give an integrated alternative. People will move.
The only thing that doesn't make sense is why Google hasn't yet bought Twitter. Maybe Twitter refuses to sell?
Re:Hmmmm, yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
Android is the only market that matters as far as their leverage goes. Everyone on android has gmail, and everyone on gmail has Google+. My family suddenly realized that everyone had a video chat app installed on their phones, imagine their shock! But how to organize it so the whole family can be on together? Oh wait, Google+ supports events now. And sharing pictures and video is about 2 taps on the screen? Oh, but my friends don't want to see yet another picture of my daughter doing something adorable, luckily it's about 2 more screen presses to only share it with my family then. The Google+ app has a remarkable amount of functionality, Google has been putting a lot of effort into getting it right because they know that mobile is where Facebook stumbles.
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Google+ functions as a Facebook and a Twitter. The whole idea of Circles allow this. Someone can add you to their Circle to see your public posts (Twitter) or you can add someone to your Circle to see your public/private posts (Facebook).
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Like Facebook and Twitter, without the people.
Re:Hmmmm, yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember when "everyone" was on MySpace, "Everyone" was there and nobody used "Facebook". Until one day ... Nobody used MySpace and everyone was on Facebook.
It is true (Score:3)
Of course MySpace REALLY just went noplace in terms of creating features. They piddled around but it was like everything was user interface nuclear disaster. It was the ugliest site in history. I guess FB COULD screw up that bad. I think they probably won't. They'll screw up a little bit, but so will Google.
Re:It is true (Score:5, Informative)
Facebook's mobile app is mediocre at best. If you believe even half the hype, that will be enough to seriously hurt them in the long run, especially considering they've admitted it themselves that they don't know how to do mobile well.
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I remember when "everyone" was on MySpace, "Everyone" was there and nobody used "Facebook". Until one day ... Nobody used MySpace and everyone was on Facebook.
But "everyone" was not on MySpace. Facebook has 10x more users than MySpace had at the height of its popularity. It won't be as easy for Facebook just to disappear.
Re:Hmmmm, yeah (Score:5, Informative)
That's why some of my friends call it "FazeBook" (or worse .. F**Book). I have no opinion, I don't use it.
Just like LiveJournal before MySpace, the social medium is fad-based. Same with clothes / fashion.
Re:Hmmmm, yeah (Score:4, Interesting)
People keep saying that... so often it's become accepted truth, while ignoring reality. Not to mention that Slashdot, ever disdainful of anything the masses like, had been gleefully predicting Facebook's imminent demise since the day they opened their door to the public.
Yes, Livejournal and Myspace had a lot of users - among the early adopters and the young. Neither had anything even remotely approaching the depth and penetration that Facebook has. So, are they fad based? Or did it just take a couple of tries before someone got it right, or close enough to right, to capture and dominate the market? The jury is still out, but the evidence is somewhat in favor of the latter.
A new social network, to topple Facebook, has to both replace Facebook functionally *and* capture a huge number of users across a broad range of social strata. (Just capturing the tech elite and next-best-thing adopters won't cut it anymore due to deep and broad penetration of Facebook.) That's a tall order, even for Google.
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Same thing for Friendster, Linked-in, and foursquare.
Twitter appears to be the only social media outlet that has stabilized--thing about it.
Re:Hmmmm, yeah (Score:4, Interesting)
I doubt it's an ad or a distortion. It's common for a smaller, more committed user base to be happier with a product. There's a lot of ownership bias. At this point most people have at least a clue what G+ is, and the ones who use it know that they're dealing with a smaller user base. They're happy with it despite its flaws and lack of ubiquity. It shouldn't be surprised.
The slowing of FB adoption is the bigger story. It probably doesn't mark a shift toward G+, but it may be that Facebook is at the upper bounds of users interested in its service. For my part, I didn't close my FB account but I've moved almost all of my social networking activity over to Twitter. I wanted to like G+ but none of my social circles use it.
Re:Hmmmm, yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
That "forcing" is part of what keeps Facebook's numbers so high, but it also leads to discontent. No one likes being forced into something, and it tends to aggravate any negative feelings they already have. On the other hand no one (except possibly Google employees =) feels forced to use G+. If you're there, it's because you want to be there.
I have noticed some swings in G+ activity, at least amongst the people i follow. Sometimes it slows down to four or five dedicated people/groups posting on a somewhat regular basis, sometimes it swings up. Currently it seems to be in a bit of an upswing with about a dozen "regular" posters, but that's a _very_ small and biased bit of anecdotal data.
Re:Hmmmm, yeah (Score:5, Funny)
Whenever my relatives get in my face and are all, "Why don't you have a facebook account?!" I'm like, "Why don't you go f*ck yourselves." Then there is a beautiful moment of realization and, meanwhile, I can get back to eating my mashed potatoes.
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Facebook has now become something of a liability for me. It's gotten to the point where even though I'd probably like> to close the account, I won't simply because others would notice. They probably wouldn't appreciate me telling them that their narcissism and attention-seeking posts reveal a side of them that I didn't want to see, and that I'd be much happier not knowing. Something about Fa
Re:Hmmmm, yeah (Score:4, Interesting)
Pardon me for being idealistic here, but I don't see how any good friend would force you to use a social networking service, especially if you have a legitimate problem with it.
I kicked Facebook permanantly over a year ago. In that time, I've found that the friends I communicate most with send me updates from Facebook anyways, or link me to pictures on Facebook (which I need a proxy to view since I've blocked as much FB as I can in my hosts) - quite a few of my friends do this in fact. This was what I figured would happen when I chose to delete my account; if they're good enough friends, we'll find other ways to keep up anyways, and that's certainly turned out to be true.
Maybe everyone who's finding this dissatisfaction should just try it. Disable the account for a few months and see what happens. Maybe you too will find that Facebook is not the only medium of communicating with other people. Personally, I feel thoroughly liberated since I deleted (not disabled) mine.
Re:Hmmmm, yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook was never awesome, but it did have a lot of my friends and family posting interesting discussions and information. Then everyone ran out of things to say, so now they just post funny pictures.
A lot of this isn't just users fault though, many issues arise out of the lack of Grouping, which is something G+ fixes and is awesome at. I don't want my pictures of partying being shown to employers, or my neices and nephews which causes issues with my conservative siblings. Sorting what information I want to send to select groups easily is the main reason I wish people were using G+.
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Now that that is out of the way, I have heard anecdotal evidence that Facebook does have some way to do grouping. Even if this is true, it points out an issue Facebook will have a hard time getting over. If it didn't have it when it started up, and they add a feature later, a lot of people will never know about it. Others will be upset with changes.
I like the way G+ has been set
Yup (Score:4, Insightful)
They will both do grouping, the g+ version is just infinitely easier to deal with. I guess FB has been working on that, but honestly I only use it myself basically so I can actually see all the messages that people I know mysteriously seem to think that posting to FB will magically get to everyone. FB is OK, G+ is definitely nicer in most ways.
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I'm skeptical. I've tried to use Google + a couple times, but quite frankly, I can't figure out what it does or how I use it.
Most of the problem is I can't tell which communications are from real people and which are spam from Google. Someone wants to connect with me...is that the G+ equivalent of an fb friend request? Or is it just because I have someone with a gmail address in my address book? And if I (attempt) connect with someone, is it someone who is using G+? Or just someone with a gmail account
Sort of (Score:3)
G+ is less designed around getting everyone to join and more around actually communicating. You can put people in your circles that are just email contacts. They'll get invited of course, but you can happily post things to them. I get what you're saying though. FB is conceptually easier to wrap your head around in a sense.
Re:Hmmmm, yeah (Score:5, Funny)
As I see it, get Facebook and you get an unwanted email address.
Get a Google email address and you get an unwanted social network with it.
Not just UI changes - stop changing SETTINGS! (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a recent email replacement issue. And logging in today I realized that my facebook chat now shows my online status, even though I explicitly disabled it a couple of months ago.
Keeping your settings on Facebook where you want them (if that is even feasible) is a full time job.
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The comment versioning with diff was another fun one that appeared out of nowhere.
Now my: "I have to disagree with this, and here's why..." indicates that I had previously said, "God damn, you're a fucking dunce."
Just let me pretend to respect all of my 8 billion "friends", Facebook!
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Re:Not just UI changes - stop changing SETTINGS! (Score:5, Informative)
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It is almost impossible to stop people tagging with us on Facebook. :(
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It's nice to see that Firefox has adopted this model, too.
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Keeping your settings on Facebook where you want them (if that is even feasible) is a full time job.
Man, I wish I had your job. Fiddle with some security settings for a bit each month, spend the rest of the time lying on the beach drinking cocktails with little umbrellas.
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You assume it pays well.
Re:Full time job? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just the next step in the social network lifecycle (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Make it really easy to use and feature-full, to build a user base.
2. Attempt to monetize it by loading it with a ton of ads and other annoyances.
3. Sell to investors for big bucks.
4. Users get fed up and leave, leaving a hulking mess.
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Except I don't see Google pawning off their service. They ARE the conglomo-corp. And historically their ads are not terribly invasive in their services, because the ads are so much better targeted at the users that they don't have to pepper the page with a dozen ads.
Google can really stick it (gymnastics term, weird of me) if they don't force the UI changes on the user. Develop new stuff, absolutely, don't force it.
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Let's see...I don't recall G+ ever playing with my privacy settings behind my back.
If I hadn't gotten my naive fingers caught in facebook's "too late we already have your data and we're not giving it up" mousetrap I'd have deleted my account there a long time ago.
And this stupid "2 week of no access" didn't work. I deleted my account there and then had facebook completely firewalled from my computer, and I waited a *month* for my "deleted" facebook account to disappear.
Not a god damned fucking thing happen
FB market oversaturated (Score:5, Insightful)
There are only so many people in the world who are interested in social networks; it's impossible to attain infinite growth.
Besides, a lot of folks at some point wake up to how much time they spend on FB and the like [a lot!].
I'm out. (Score:2)
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Misleading google+ figures (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Misleading google+ figures (Score:5, Informative)
In absolute numbers, that's G+ increasing by 11.6 M and Facebook increasing by 4 M - or G+ increasing 2.9X as fast as Facebook. In percentages, that's G+ increasing by 57% and Facebook increasing by 2.6%. So I'd say that's dramatic growth at G+, and mild growth at Facebook. Mind you, part of that is because Facebook is practically saturated.
Re:Misleading google+ figures (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a question of scale. If a social network has 800 million people and 10 join, that's not "dramatic". If it has 2 people and 10 join, that is dramatic.
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otherwise you look like kind of an asshole.
Or a shill, which is what I suspect is behind this slashvertisement.
My biggest facebook annoyance (Score:4, Interesting)
They keep redirecting my tablet from www.facebook to m.facebook. That's like me telling my taxi driver to take me to Baltimore, and instead they take me to the tiny town of Columbia. I can't figure-out why the programmers would arbitrarily decide to overrule my desire to vist the full WWW page.
As for google, none of my friends are over there, so I have no interest. It would be like standing in a room by myself.
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They keep redirecting my tablet from www.facebook to m.facebook. That's like me telling my taxi driver to take me to Baltimore, and instead they take me to the tiny town of Columbia. I can't figure-out why the programmers would arbitrarily decide to overrule my desire to vist the full WWW page.
As for google, none of my friends are over there, so I have no interest. It would be like standing in a room by myself.
why? because they hired some mobile "expert" fucker asshole, that's why. extra work, shittier results to visitors( and then they go on complaining about fragmentation.. that they could just ignore if they had smarts). oh and they copied that from what google did circa 2002(it was really, really annoying to use from ip addresses they had determined to be wap browsers, so they translated every fucking page through their god awful wapizer even if you had been better off with the original page, the god awful wa
Re:My biggest facebook annoyance (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of my pet peeves in websites today. It's not just FB that does this.
Attention web developers: PLEASE STOP forcing us to the mobile versions of your sites. Just stop it.
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If you have Firefox/Firefox-mobile on your tablet, you can use the addon "Phony" [mozilla.org] to spoof your user-agent if you want. (Or "Modify Headers" addon for something a bit more full featured.) Chrome might have a similar addon. Opera probably already has something like that built in (it usually does).
If you're using an iPad, I can't help you.
As for google, none of my friends are over there,
G+ doesn't have friends, it has circles. So many circles...
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Quite simple. Because it's their fucking website and they'll have their servers send you hither and yon as they damn well see fit.
Don't like it? Leave.
Oh right, you can't because they don't honor account deletion requests.
I am being sarcastic, but the fact that they own the domain name pretty much means they get to do what they darned please. You cannot force them to change, and because they already have your information by the balls and refuse to delete it even when you tell them to, they pretty much ha
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Yes, please trust your social network overlords to make your decisions for you.
You are not allowed to play games with your user string. Trust us, we must have total control over your browsing experience in order to provide you with the best possible service.
Thank you and have a nice day
-- Big Brother
Your Mom's on Facebook (Score:4, Funny)
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I never opened a Facebook account (Score:2, Insightful)
I never will
For that, I was a smelly old geeky kook before.
But now, I am smelly old PRESCIENT geeky kook.
Yeah!
People are finally understanding they can do everything Facebook does for them without feeding an advertising and spying machine in other venues.
Not that Google is an improvement in that department, but eventually Fabebook's crass manipulation and even Google' subtle manipulation will make way to the realization: you own your data, and you control your data, and it's time everyone woke up and realiz
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Re:I never opened a Facebook account (Score:4, Funny)
(Seriously... FB can't die soon enough for me; I'm getting tired of holding out.)
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"FB can't die soon enough for me; I'm getting tired of holding out"
Did you think about it, or did you just not use it because it's popular, and you have committed to an emotional ID of being on the outside cause you think it's cool?
Otherwise the sentence makes no damn sense. If you don't want to use it fine, but why the fuck are you "getting tired holding out"? That implies you are holding out against your wishes not to be holding out.
Makes no damn sense.
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if I put something on my homepage, google gets it - it's meant to be public in the first place. if I use my email, I get google adverts tailored by it...
and diaspora will fly just as well as private irc networks. not too well.
and if you were on fb you might have had your anti-tea party movie funded already(also there's no need to tinyfy the url, it cuts down on clickthroughs since there's a possibility for goatse now). that's why the internet is a hard game - sometimes you want others to notice.
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I have a FB placeholder account. If anyone wants to friend me from the old days, I log in and approve it, the log out. People can get in touch with me easily, but I don't have the annoyance of FB tracking.
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I deleted my Facebook account about 2 months ago.
And then I really missed, not the people / friends (the important of whom I speak to outside of Facebook) but the updates from pages that I "liked." I realized that I used Facebook more as a homepage / portal / news feed than anything else. And some of the stuff I couldn't get outside of Facebook. I wanted to create a new account that would have zero friends (except for maybe my wife & kids), but the registration insisted on providing them my cell phone n
Not sure if trolling or just stupid (Score:4, Funny)
Seems obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds kind of obvious that Google+ would have higher satisfaction then Facebook. The only people using it are people who really want to use it, no one is there just because all there friends are there.
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And half the people who use it are Google employees, so it makes sense they'd be more positive in satisfaction surveys.
Yeah, right (Score:2, Funny)
Google+ users are more satisfied with the site
I'm sure they are. Both of them.
Re:Yeah, right (Score:4, Funny)
Get with the times, man - there are THREE now.
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Dangit. You beat me to the exact punchline I was going to use.
The fall in facebook stock (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook wants people to believe they are the next google. They are more likely the next AOL.
Re:The fall in facebook stock (Score:4, Insightful)
When Goldman Sachs was telling the world it was worth $50 billion 6 months or so before the IPO, that should've been a sign for every investor to run for the hills. If you're not smart enough to turn tail when you detect the taint of GS, you deserve to get looted.
1.6 billion shares could be dumped in 12 months (Score:5, Informative)
The actual problem for FB is that 1.6 billion shares could be dumped by insiders in the next several months. I don't expect it to happen, but a bunch will. But, but, but... didn't they only sell 421 million shares at the IPO. Yeah, but, insiders have been granted 1.6 billion shares beforehand. See http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/columnist/krantz/story/2012-05-25/facebook-insider-lockup-period/55208546/1 [usatoday.com]
> The onslaught of Facebook stock looks like an avalanche. At the 91-day point after
> the IPO, insiders are able to sell 268 million shares of stock. Between 91 and
> 181 days after the IPO, insiders can sell an additional 137 million shares. And
> then after 181 days following the IPO, another 1.2 billion shares are free to be sold.
I don't think that every insider will cash out (e.g. Mark Z wants to retain control) but obviously a bunch of "paper millionaires" will want to get out while the getting out is still good. For a country-by-country breakdown of Facebook's numbers, over various timeranges, check out http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/?interval=last-month#chart-intervals [socialbakers.com]
The high water mark. (Score:4, Informative)
Hardly surprising really that just after the IPO the numbers start flatling. It seemed obvious to me that the IPO was simply to cash in while the going was good, rather than to move on from there.
There's no sustainability in social networking, and I imagine the smart money knew that already. I imagine the people who invested in it were the same ones who thought that the housing market would never crash.
Google+ GUI & Privacy (Score:2)
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How is the GUI intrusive? I don't understand annoying either, but that's subjective.
Google has pretty good privacy policy and implementation.
Bzzt all.worship.facebook.bzzt (Score:2)
We identify with the Zuckerberg peaceful ruler of the 9 galaxies. All hail facebook. All hail.
Facebook is a bloated website (Score:2)
Re:Google+ and Circles (Score:4, Informative)
Anyone can add you to their circles, but unless you either a) post everything as public for EVERYONE to see, or b) add them to one of your circles in return, they won't see anything you post anyway, so what's it matter?
This is one thing Google Plus has done right. The default for posting is to only show your posts to people in your own circles, but you can show stuff to the entire world if you want.
If you want to talk about what's "mean" the only thing I don't like is that people can see who you have in your circles, so sometimes you feel pressure to add someone just to be polite, of course you can always have a circle for those people and not share anything with them... They can't see WHICH circle you put them in...
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If you want to talk about what's "mean" the only thing I don't like is that people can see who you have in your circles
You can change this: go to your profile, click on edit. People in your circles appear on the right hand side - notice that it highlights in blue when you mouse over it - click that area and you can change the visibility. Uncheck the box to turn visibility completely off, or you can choose to just show them to people in your circles.
Re:Google+ and Circles (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't HAVE to add them to your circles, if random guy I don't know adds me to their circles, I don't add them back (and I do have a couple of those... though I have no idea why) it is very explicit when you look at it who is following who. if random guy is following you without you following back, it makes them look like a stalker, doesn't make you look bad, in fact if anything it makes you look good because you must be interesting if you have fans like that. The only time it is awkward is when your real life friendship is also awkward (ie that creepy guy who somehow ends up at the same parties as you and just sits in the corner all night... you don't want to add him because he's not really a friend... but he's at all the same events you are, so you don't feel right excluding him either for fear of offending him and having to deal with it the next time you see him)
This allows famous people to interact more easilly, they can have millions of fans following them without needing to approve each and every one, and yet they can still have only their actual friends in their own circles, and share more personal stuff only with them, without having to share it with their millions of followers, and without having to have a seperate persona for their public selves from their private lives. Now famous people are somewhat of an extreme example, but it scales well for all levels.
I do have a fair number of complaints about a few things google has done, but the setup of their circles is not one of them, that's one place that I feel Google nailed it just right.
Re:Google+ and Circles (Score:4, Informative)
Well, the visibility of the things you publish is based on who you have in your circles, so it doesn't really matter who adds you. That's kind of the point of the circles. You don't need a separate "fan" page, for instance, in order to publish different things for public/private consumption.
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I certainly wouldn't mind those numbers being a little higher, and perhaps i should go out looking for a fe
People use it to monetize (Score:2)
G-users are interested in getting you to look at whatever their product is. Ads pretending to be a group of friends, with a smattering of people who believe Pepsi is their friend. An online business convention.
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Some of the strangers are interesting. I've been following a lot of tech people including Linus and several FreeBSD developers. There is a totally different user base on G+. The content is interesting and not stupid cards and signs spamming my Facebook feed. People use the site differently. It's not a replacement for Facebook. It's like the intellectual's social network in comparison.