Tag: social network

Adam Mosseri further clarifies position about news on Threads

Instagram and Threads Chief Adam Mosseri posted on Threads to clarify what people perceive to be suppression of news on the platform.

I don’t believe the IG team and especially leadership are sneaky or malicious in any way but it’s difficult to see this statement and take it at face value.

Just to clarify, and this is on me for not being specific enough in my language historically, we’re not trying to avoid being a place for any news. News about sports, music, fashion, culture is something we’re actively pursuing. Political news is the topic where are looking to be more careful. Politics is already very much on threads, and that’s okay, we’re just not looking to amplify it.

He said that the kind of news (and presumably other types of discussions) they want on the platform is around sports, music, fashion, and culture. They prefer those to be driving the conversation instead of hard news or politics which are not actually banned but they want to be “more careful” about those topics, presumably, and it’s my guess, because of how sensitive and delicate they can be, not to mention Meta’s issue and history with the news media in general.

Everything in life is about politics. Sports is a battleground for political ideologies (Colin Kaepernick, anyone?), the fashion scene is a statement of political allegiances (Cate Blanchett, we see you), and music is a hotbed of political discourse (where do I even start?). As for culture, oh boy, if it’s not a political minefield then what is?

These are hot button arenas rife with debates over subjects such as race, social justice, equality, opportunity, and exploitation—topics that Meta appears to prefer to avoid. It seems Meta’s ideal platform is one of superficial harmony and feel-good aesthetics, shunning the gritty realities of societal discourse in favor of saccharine content and elaborate platitudes.

The more fundamental issue

Choosing what topics to focus on isn’t even their main problem. The Threads platform’s algorithmic approach to content curation is fundamentally flawed, prioritizing stale content and undermining the user experience.

The default ‘For You’ feed is plagued by a glaring disconnect between user expectations and delivery, as it frequently surfaces posts that are either already two days old—a virtual eon in the text-based social media space—or irrelevant and unwanted. This not only diminishes the freshness of the feed but also calls into question the platform’s understanding of ‘relevancy,’ which is intrinsically tied to the timeliness of content.

Additionally, the apparently elusive ‘Following’ feed, which offers a chronological timeline, is marred by its clunky activation and its baffling tendency to revert to the ‘For You’ feed at random. This erratic behavior disrupts the user’s control over their own social media experience, forcing them back into a loop of outdated content.

Threads says it wants to be a conversation platform but its default feed still struggles to surface timely and relevant posts. It is certainly a challenge to algorithmically deliver content that matches everyone’s unique sets of interests, and it has to be algorithmically driven if they want to ensure people don’t miss posts that they may be interested.

Clearly it’s not impossible to run a purely chronologically driven feed because Twitter did it before and Mastodon, along with its ActivityPub gang, still do, but unless you’re chronically online, the likelihood of seeing posts that are published while you’re away is small.

Without an algorithm that can be tuned to identify your interests and serve you posts that match them you’ll have to rely on other people surfacing them to you either by replying to those posts or have someone repost them and for some people that works just fine but when you run a platform with the intention of keeping as much of people’s time and attention, an algorithm is necessary.

In essence, Threads still has some ways to go to address the critical issue of recency, leaving users drowning in a sea of irrelevance. The platform’s inability to provide a consistently up-to-date and relevant feed not only frustrates users but also undermines the very purpose of social media—to connect people with what matters to them, here and now.

A text based social platform is inherently different to one that’s based on images or videos. Usage on TikTok and Instagram are driven more by entertainment value while text platforms are about what’s happening. If Meta wants Threads to be a place for conversations, let people follow their interests, not just accounts, and tune the algorithm to lean heavier on recency.

Matt Mullenweg is probably the ideal web company CEO

Automattic has been running for 17 years. The company is home to nearly two dozen brands and products powering or leveraging the web, including WordPress, WordPress VIP, WooCommerce, Jetpack, Simplenote, Day One, PocketCasts, and Tumblr.

When Automattic purchased Tumblr, they somehow managed to pay just $3 million from Verizon who got it as part of its acquisition of Yahoo. Tumblr was a billion dollar company at one point and since 2019 it belongs to a multibillion dollar company.

The transaction cost for us buying Tumblr was de minimis. But it was a deal in which we took on all of its liabilities and all of its legal cases, we kept all the employees and all the costs to run it. Tumblr was, and still is, burning quite a bit of cash.

Matt said Automattic was prepared to pay $100 million but they managed to only spend $3 million. Sounds like a steal? Well, in the three years since the acquisition Tumblr was being cleaned up from the inside. 85% of the team joined after the acquisition and he’s had to reorganize the company to reassign staff because Tumblr has to downsize to 50-60 people to match their revenue before they can go up again.

From the interview it sounded like he didn’t let people go but reassigned them to the other products under Automattic.

Matt understands that the web is a decentralized network built on protocols. He also understands talent is also decentralized. Automattic allows its staff to work from anywhere and no longer has a physical office since shutting down its headquarters in 2017. Everyone who works at WordPress (even Matt) has to spend time handling customer support to understand their pain points.

Understanding what decentralized entails is core to Matt’s goals for the web. It’s why the idea of federating Tumblr and WordPress sites and pages and allow those sites and pages to be connected to join the federated network and become the social web is one of the company’s top priorities and when you run a social web company, content moderation is key.

I would say that it is about 20 percent pruning out the bad stuff as if you’re weeding a garden and about 80 percent encouraging the things that you want to grow. It definitely needs to be a long-term thing. You need to water it every day, but the results are going to happen over months or years.

Tumblr recently reopened itself to adult content but it’s doing so in a more careful and controlled manner to accommodate the needs of those working or with interest in the adult industry and those wishing to keep their neighborhood safe for children and acceptable at work.

Tumblr, WordPress, and Automattic may not be as glitzy and glamorous as other major web companies but more than 40% of websites run on WordPress today and they’re quietly marching towards 80% by embracing openness and decentralization.

When TechCrunch interviewed Matt as the new CEO of Automattic in 2014, he said, “The power of the web is not in centralization, it’s not in closed systems or anything like that. It’s in its open nature and that’s what allowed it to flourish for the first 10 or 15 years”

What if we reintroduce the old social network model?

Twitter isn’t worse today just because its owner is an attention seeking manbaby with no self control or maturity of mind when he tweets, Twitter is worse because its owner allows, enables, empowers, and creates targets for malicious individuals to attack and harass, based on misconceptions, misperceptions, and misunderstanding of what matters. 

On top of that, he is part of the malicious individuals himself. People often talk about those who want to watch the world burn, this guy is the mascot and leader of that group.

People used to have to post their content on their own websites or blogs and often they include a blog roll or links to other blogs or sites they like to help with discovery. 

Social media made all that so much easier but it also enables malicious individuals and content to roam much more freely. Reintroducing that control over what people are willing to see and deal with in a much more deliberate and comprehensive way may be the necessary element to reduce the amount of toxicity that’s being spread around.

Mastodon’s federated nature gives people that level of control. If you’re savvy enough you can host and manage your own server/instance/domain, but if you’re not, there are thousands of servers managed by various kinds of people, many of whom may share the same views and interests with you. You can choose to be an island or be in a city or town or your choosing. Your level of interaction is up to you.

Or you can return to old school blogging.

If Twitter is the backchannel of life, Path is the backchannel of Twitter

I’ve been so hooked on Path, it has managed to replace Twitter as my go to app every morning.

I love the private sharing feature it imposes on its members and I have no qualms rejecting sharing requests from people I know simply to limit my spread of updates. It’s not like I’ve left Twitter. My primary presence is still on Twitter but for a lot of personal updates, Path really is the place. Twitter is the public plaza where you seek out general news and other info.

Google+ would have been it though if the mobile app wasn’t so shit in the first place. Despite the focus on design Google has taken in recent months, its mobile app developers haven’t seem to be able to grasp how important a well-designed interface is when it comes to applications. The team has some serious issues to address.

Perhaps I’m part of an elite snob whose view on mobile apps have been so skewed by Apple’s near-meticulous designs, that I place a stronger emphasis on interface design in delivering functions, although Apple’s own apps are beginning to look ridiculous themselves lately.

Honestly there’s little to differentiate between Path and Facebook on mobile but Path isn’t full of people whose updates I don’t give a shit about. I mean yeah, I added those people on Facebook because I used to know them or I just met them but the kinds of things they share on Facebook are either duplicates of what they said on Twitter or that I’m so far removed from them these days that whatever they posted just fails to catch my interest anymore.

I set up this blog for Jakarta’s early Twitter adopters and as it turns out, Path is taking over the role what Twitter used to be back in the days of 2007-2008. 

Twitter is now like the mall and Path is that street corner cafe where you and your closest friends hang out. This is a funny analogy because back in 2008, Facebook was the mall and Twitter was the corner cafe. So what is Facebook now? I have no idea, I couldn’t care less and I only use it for messaging.

The other day I said that if Twitter is the backchannel of life, Path is the backchannel of Twitter.

What’s the future for social networks?

Louie Mantia’s post on social networks gave me something to think about.

Ultimately these networks may grow or expand around their core differentiating strengths to accommodate popular feature requests, perhaps to prevent members from leaving or to encourage spending more time within the network.

At that point, the networks may look similar to each other, serving similar purposes and people would begin to think, “why bother?”

Already we’re seeing that sort of response from Facebook users regarding Google+. Many of those who enable location sharing on Twitter don’t bother checking in to Foursquare. A lot of Indonesians opt for serial tweets instead of blogging. Gowalla fell victim to Foursquare already. Indonesians also eschew sites like eBay in favor of selling things on Facebook or BlackBerry Messenger Groups.

Most people hop on to a social network because their friends (or friend), who happened to be quite persuasive, are there and can’t stop talking about it everywhere (guilty as charged).

Ideally you would have one home on the Internet in which anyone who wishes to know about you can go there and see for themselves all the online activities you’ve done.

These could be your status updates, short thoughts, songs you listened to, movies and TV shows you watched, articles or posts you’ve written, locations you’ve been to, food you’ve eaten, and so on.

Sometimes though, you may not want  all of those updates lumped together in one place because you want some sort of privacy. The cynics would say, “then don’t say those things online!”, but some do want to post them on the Internet.

Some people have an inherent narcissistic tendency that they think would need to be satisfied. Whether that translates to sharing particular things publicly, privately to a group of friends, or fully private, just to have a record of their thoughts and activities, that remains the right of the person but I think they should be able to exert some rights into the things they post on the Internet.

I don’t think that there will be that many similarly purposed social networks in the next year or two. However, those who can maintain their core strengths and unique selling points will remain attractive and will have their own members. There are enough people sharing particular traits to find specific features attractive and they will ensure the existence of niche networks.

Smaller networks that serve similar purposes to larger ones may end up being swallowed or shut down, leaving devoted fans upset and move on to the next network. There will always be resistance to using Facebook. Some people may be registered to Facebook but it doesn’t mean they use it.

It’s gonna be a matter of how these networks will be able to keep themselves afloat.

What’s the future for social networks?

Facebook: That six degrees thing is now less than five! Twitter: Been there done that.

Much had been said about how everyone on Facebook is now connected by less than five degrees. I think what Facebook does is not much more than show that fact, a reflection if you will, of the many personal and professional connections we’ve made outside of the online social network. A research from Sysomos published last year showed similar results for Twitter.

Perhaps my use of Twitter and Facebook clouds my judgement somewhat but I find that Twitter allows me to connect with more people than Facebook does and those connections are much more meaningful and more valuable. As the saying goes, Facebook is for people you went to school with, Twitter is for people you wish you went to school with.

Honestly, I care little of the connections reflected on Facebook, I have little to no interest in the updates from people that Facebook shows me on its news feed. It’s not necessarily Facebook’s fault though that people I’m friends with on Facebook don’t post content that interest me, and I blame those who litter my news feed with stupid updates such as game requests.

Updates on Twitter on the other hand, are much more interesting to me because they bring new information, amusing stories, facts and discoveries and they made me appreciate the people who deliver those tweets more than those who post updates on Facebook.

Getting back to the research, if we go back a few more years, I bet we would see similar results for Friendster if such a research was done around that time. It’s not Facebook that brought connections closer, it’s the Internet. Facebook only shows it.

Why Color got itself $41 million in funding

According to Nguyen, Color is built on some serious technology. The company has six patents pending and sees itself as “much more of a research company and a data mining company than a photo sharing site.”

As such, Nguyen explains that Color can ingest and analyze four times the amount of data than Google did in its early days. This, not a tech “bubble” or an early exit, justify the $41 million investment.

CEO Bill Nguyen explains the massive seed funding from Sequoia Capital ($25 million), Bain Capital ($9 million), and Silicon Valley Bank ($7 million)

Why Color got itself $41 million in funding

thedailywhat:

World Map of the Day: Facebook data infrastructure engineering team intern Paul was “interested in seeing how geography and political borders affected where people lived relative to their friends,” so he plugged a sample of approx. ten million pairs of friends into the open-source statistics environment R. He played around with the data until he managed to get the effect he wanted.

After a few minutes of rendering, the new plot appeared, and I was a bit taken aback by what I saw. The blob had turned into a surprisingly detailed map of the world. Not only were continents visible, certain international borders were apparent as well. What really struck me, though, was knowing that the lines didn’t represent coasts or rivers or political borders, but real human relationships. Each line might represent a friendship made while travelling, a family member abroad, or an old college friend pulled away by the various forces of life.

Click here for hi-res.

[facebook.]