I think the way that these businesses are structured plays a significant role in how they view and engage with their user base (probably an obvious statement). What if revenues and profits were secondary to user experience (and by experience I mean prioritising the users values and overall quality of life)? We’d hopefully see less of the reds because I’m sure if you asked people whether they’d like to spend hours on their phones stalking random people they don’t know vs invest time in pursuing a passion or catching up with a friend the answer would be the latter. I think social media has made us (the user) the commodity instead of the customer and that’s not how it started out. If we had more input into how we’d like to consume content this would be better for us but worse for the social media companies (presumably).
100% agree. Two more things about the structure: 1) they are profit-maximising, therefore attention-maximising 2) some have founders (Zuckerberg) who have effective control of the company despite it being public, because they hold a class of shares with greater voting rights.
Also agree that it's all about whether we have input into how we consume content. There's a precedent for that happening in a way that's adversarial to (i.e. outside of the control of and against the wishes of) big tech: ad blockers. Why don't these help us e.g. move back to the greens on the chart above? Because 1) most ad blockers focus on ads, not on UX of social media per se 2) most social media is consumed on the phone, where iOS and Android limit the kinds of interventions/blockers/redesigners you can run.
Some stuff in EU regulations, e.g. the right to a chronological feed, is an attempt to let users 'pick the greens' again. But the tricky part there is the power of defaults - is it meaningful to give users this choice, if the default is non-chronological?
I think this is interesting (especially the menu point - what would we choose?), and makes me think that the graph (social vs graph) thing is a cousin of a wider category of 'JTBD' (Job To Be Done): why am I here? Over time it seems we've moved from 'communicate', 'find out what's going on (and the FOMO it might entail, sure)', 'get details for the party', 'remain in loose touch' --> 'be entertained', 'be jealous/boastful', 'kill time on the bus'. Which really makes me wonder why we lost Facebook as a core tool. What actually happened to make me stop using it? Well, enshittification i guess. I still want to go to events, and see what interesting stuff people are up to/writing/sharing, but that's now harder and more fragmented. Meanwhile, the product that did that job increased its ad load, and moved to algorithmic feed in order to monetise. But doesn't that JTBD of 'general social network' actually still exist, underserved? I'd love your take on the _why_ of this, and the mix of economic, social, etc that means no one has created a genuine competitor product that's taken off in an way, with a social graph at its core rather than an interest one.
That's such a great point. I feel like the JTBD you describe *does* still exist. I mean, I speak for myself here, but Facebook 2012 (to pick a pretty arbitrary point where Facebook felt better) was seriously useful for me. I loved the event functionality, I loved having a contact book of friends and being able to message them in one place. I liked seeing content from family and friends, although even then it was kind of annoying too, and by definition the most attention-seeking would be the ones to post most often.
Here are some possible explanations for why no one has filled that JTBD gap:
- Antitrust and switching costs (which go together): People invested in their social graph on Facebook, they can't easily take it anywhere so when Facebook degrades, they're stuck there. No regulation forces Facebook to allow your social graph to be portable. I don't think this is a sufficient condition, because then we'd expect to see a younger generation (who never invested in Facebook) go after that JTBD.
- Attention first: social media have all gone after maximising attention, and the way you do that is with the most entertaining entertainment, not the most useful utility. In other words, you do whatever you can to get people staying on their phones, which is basically the reds above, and you crowd out all the other stuff. There's just no time left in the day for it. Any new social media competitor coming along struggles to get even 5 minutes out of the attention mix for the day, unless they 'defect' to the reds*. People use small room social media, mostly through messaging (i.e. WhatsApp), and email, to organize events and do stuff that they used to do on Facebook 2012, and that *kind of* does the trick for them.
*This is why e.g. BeReal failed. People are socialized to not pay for social media. So you're stuck with monetizing attention as a business model. So if your values are explicitly about limiting the amount of attention you grab, you'll be in trouble.
I love this as an idea for a follow up piece. Will make a note.
Totally agree and think this should be a piece, also love the double-entendre of 'defecting to the reds'. I know we've replaced some of this with small room / ephemeral stuff, but for me it does feel like that ambient layer gets lost ('ah yeah, Tom - I'll invite him, why not' is lost when you send invites over Whatsapp, to some extent). I'm focusing on my experience but am aware a LOT of ppl still use FB for exactly what I'm describing, but the enshittification (e14n) makes that group much likelier to churn too. And the revenue vs quality of experience thing seems as you say to be the crux.
So are there _no_ models anywhere that manage to get it right? I'd argue Wechat, because it has payment and ad revenue from other products/feeds, could support a healthy environment in its core social graph. So being a super app where you monetise in places A & B, and give pure value in C & D, might work? Which begs the Q of why the big blue FB app isn't that, why did they break all the properties out? Was the surface area just too big? If my IG feed was in the big blue app I'd likely hop over to my social space, messenger etc more often. Instead I've totally abandoned both.
I think the way that these businesses are structured plays a significant role in how they view and engage with their user base (probably an obvious statement). What if revenues and profits were secondary to user experience (and by experience I mean prioritising the users values and overall quality of life)? We’d hopefully see less of the reds because I’m sure if you asked people whether they’d like to spend hours on their phones stalking random people they don’t know vs invest time in pursuing a passion or catching up with a friend the answer would be the latter. I think social media has made us (the user) the commodity instead of the customer and that’s not how it started out. If we had more input into how we’d like to consume content this would be better for us but worse for the social media companies (presumably).
100% agree. Two more things about the structure: 1) they are profit-maximising, therefore attention-maximising 2) some have founders (Zuckerberg) who have effective control of the company despite it being public, because they hold a class of shares with greater voting rights.
Also agree that it's all about whether we have input into how we consume content. There's a precedent for that happening in a way that's adversarial to (i.e. outside of the control of and against the wishes of) big tech: ad blockers. Why don't these help us e.g. move back to the greens on the chart above? Because 1) most ad blockers focus on ads, not on UX of social media per se 2) most social media is consumed on the phone, where iOS and Android limit the kinds of interventions/blockers/redesigners you can run.
Some stuff in EU regulations, e.g. the right to a chronological feed, is an attempt to let users 'pick the greens' again. But the tricky part there is the power of defaults - is it meaningful to give users this choice, if the default is non-chronological?
https://mashable.com/article/instagram-chronological-feed-europe-meta
Which reminds me that 'chronological' could be a useful aspect to include in the typology!
I think this is interesting (especially the menu point - what would we choose?), and makes me think that the graph (social vs graph) thing is a cousin of a wider category of 'JTBD' (Job To Be Done): why am I here? Over time it seems we've moved from 'communicate', 'find out what's going on (and the FOMO it might entail, sure)', 'get details for the party', 'remain in loose touch' --> 'be entertained', 'be jealous/boastful', 'kill time on the bus'. Which really makes me wonder why we lost Facebook as a core tool. What actually happened to make me stop using it? Well, enshittification i guess. I still want to go to events, and see what interesting stuff people are up to/writing/sharing, but that's now harder and more fragmented. Meanwhile, the product that did that job increased its ad load, and moved to algorithmic feed in order to monetise. But doesn't that JTBD of 'general social network' actually still exist, underserved? I'd love your take on the _why_ of this, and the mix of economic, social, etc that means no one has created a genuine competitor product that's taken off in an way, with a social graph at its core rather than an interest one.
That's such a great point. I feel like the JTBD you describe *does* still exist. I mean, I speak for myself here, but Facebook 2012 (to pick a pretty arbitrary point where Facebook felt better) was seriously useful for me. I loved the event functionality, I loved having a contact book of friends and being able to message them in one place. I liked seeing content from family and friends, although even then it was kind of annoying too, and by definition the most attention-seeking would be the ones to post most often.
Here are some possible explanations for why no one has filled that JTBD gap:
- Antitrust and switching costs (which go together): People invested in their social graph on Facebook, they can't easily take it anywhere so when Facebook degrades, they're stuck there. No regulation forces Facebook to allow your social graph to be portable. I don't think this is a sufficient condition, because then we'd expect to see a younger generation (who never invested in Facebook) go after that JTBD.
- Attention first: social media have all gone after maximising attention, and the way you do that is with the most entertaining entertainment, not the most useful utility. In other words, you do whatever you can to get people staying on their phones, which is basically the reds above, and you crowd out all the other stuff. There's just no time left in the day for it. Any new social media competitor coming along struggles to get even 5 minutes out of the attention mix for the day, unless they 'defect' to the reds*. People use small room social media, mostly through messaging (i.e. WhatsApp), and email, to organize events and do stuff that they used to do on Facebook 2012, and that *kind of* does the trick for them.
*This is why e.g. BeReal failed. People are socialized to not pay for social media. So you're stuck with monetizing attention as a business model. So if your values are explicitly about limiting the amount of attention you grab, you'll be in trouble.
I love this as an idea for a follow up piece. Will make a note.
Totally agree and think this should be a piece, also love the double-entendre of 'defecting to the reds'. I know we've replaced some of this with small room / ephemeral stuff, but for me it does feel like that ambient layer gets lost ('ah yeah, Tom - I'll invite him, why not' is lost when you send invites over Whatsapp, to some extent). I'm focusing on my experience but am aware a LOT of ppl still use FB for exactly what I'm describing, but the enshittification (e14n) makes that group much likelier to churn too. And the revenue vs quality of experience thing seems as you say to be the crux.
So are there _no_ models anywhere that manage to get it right? I'd argue Wechat, because it has payment and ad revenue from other products/feeds, could support a healthy environment in its core social graph. So being a super app where you monetise in places A & B, and give pure value in C & D, might work? Which begs the Q of why the big blue FB app isn't that, why did they break all the properties out? Was the surface area just too big? If my IG feed was in the big blue app I'd likely hop over to my social space, messenger etc more often. Instead I've totally abandoned both.