It's SO over: cool cyberkids abandon social networking sites(guardian.co.uk)
guardian.co.uk
It's SO over: cool cyberkids abandon social networking sites
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/06/young-abandon-social-networking-sites
9 comments
I really hope facebook and twitter are fads that will be abandoned and forgotten. I don't want to be practically forced to use them just to stay in touch.
So what do you want to use to keep in touch? The telephone? I don't think people would appreciate it if you kept calling them every few days asking, "What are you doing now?".
> "What are you doing now?"
We don't need to know this. We (this social media culture/generation) spend more time finding out what other people are doing than actually doing anything. It doesn't matter what your friends or your brother or your aunt did today or last night or last month even.
We don't need to know this. We (this social media culture/generation) spend more time finding out what other people are doing than actually doing anything. It doesn't matter what your friends or your brother or your aunt did today or last night or last month even.
Even though Facebook is largely defined by the power users and the company's goal is to just keep ratcheting up engagement, I don't think that's the right way to judge it as a service.
As a casual user who visits Facebook a couple times a week, I find it to be tremendously valuable. Contrast with email for a moment. I somehow made it into my inlaws' family list. This is a group of perhaps 100 families who all manage their own copy of the list via Reply All. Many of them post multi-page updates of their domestic tasks several times a week. I can never be removed from or block this list because I may receive legitimate email from any of these people. I may occasionally actually be interested in what they are doing, but as it is the problem is worse than spam by a long shot. Now that some of them are getting on Facebook it is a huge improvement. I can block the truly annoying people and still keep ambient awareness of what's going on on my own schedule.
I think Facebook is a tremendously useful tool, which is often obscured inside the echo-chamber by the feeding frenzies around virality and engagement. In other words, I believe Facebook is sustainable.
As a casual user who visits Facebook a couple times a week, I find it to be tremendously valuable. Contrast with email for a moment. I somehow made it into my inlaws' family list. This is a group of perhaps 100 families who all manage their own copy of the list via Reply All. Many of them post multi-page updates of their domestic tasks several times a week. I can never be removed from or block this list because I may receive legitimate email from any of these people. I may occasionally actually be interested in what they are doing, but as it is the problem is worse than spam by a long shot. Now that some of them are getting on Facebook it is a huge improvement. I can block the truly annoying people and still keep ambient awareness of what's going on on my own schedule.
I think Facebook is a tremendously useful tool, which is often obscured inside the echo-chamber by the feeding frenzies around virality and engagement. In other words, I believe Facebook is sustainable.
Counter-anecdote: When I first moved here, I was very involved in the local music scene. In the last two years, I've pretty much lost touch with it completely; I noticed the other day that the curve tracked my gradual abandonment of myspace. Without those bulletins, it's hard to know when bands and venues too small for flyers are doing things.
IM/Skype-like clients with an added status message logger (side note: ideally OSS client and protocol, p2p (with async message buffer), encrypted).
Every time a user changes his status message it gets logged as if it were a tweet. It's more like facebook than twitter, though, in the sense that only mutual "friendships" would be possible (could be made configurable: "allow anyone to see my status updates, but not my online status, and only allow mutual friends to chat/talk to me").
It would be a pretty good signal to noise ratio for most people.
Every time a user changes his status message it gets logged as if it were a tweet. It's more like facebook than twitter, though, in the sense that only mutual "friendships" would be possible (could be made configurable: "allow anyone to see my status updates, but not my online status, and only allow mutual friends to chat/talk to me").
It would be a pretty good signal to noise ratio for most people.
E-mail. And telephone (ip, or not) for more urgent things.
how about rss feeds on my blog? email?
No, quit thinking backwards. A new form of social networking will be championed by the young and early adapters, soon enough. I'm not going to suggest what is next, but I know it won't have annoying profile pages where users can list endless and pointless information about favorite TV shows, movies, books, etc. I have noticed that a lot of people have stopped filling in static profile data, or greatly shortened what they had - Gen-y moves fast and is too dynamic to be labeled/pigeonholed with static data.
Another idea that I have for the future of social networking is that it will open up again, or become less private. The problem with facebook is that it has become a glorified rolodex where you can list and keep track of everyone you know, but you don't find or meet anyone new, anymore, because everyone has private profiles. Thus, the only people you friend are old classmates, relatives, or people you meet in the "real-world". It used to be the opposite, I used to friend new people all the time by searching networks with like interests or by stumbling onto people through friends of friends. People will either need to loosen up, or use virtual aliases so that people can actually network and find other like-minded friends on "social" networks, again.
Another idea that I have for the future of social networking is that it will open up again, or become less private. The problem with facebook is that it has become a glorified rolodex where you can list and keep track of everyone you know, but you don't find or meet anyone new, anymore, because everyone has private profiles. Thus, the only people you friend are old classmates, relatives, or people you meet in the "real-world". It used to be the opposite, I used to friend new people all the time by searching networks with like interests or by stumbling onto people through friends of friends. People will either need to loosen up, or use virtual aliases so that people can actually network and find other like-minded friends on "social" networks, again.
I'm tired of articles that disprove their own titles
"Clearly take-up among under 16-year-olds is very high … so we cannot say for certain whether this is people in a certain age group who are not setting up social networking profiles or whether it's a population shift which is reflecting people getting older and having a social networking profile that they set up two years ago," he said. "The main point is the profile of social networking users is getting older."
"Clearly take-up among under 16-year-olds is very high … so we cannot say for certain whether this is people in a certain age group who are not setting up social networking profiles or whether it's a population shift which is reflecting people getting older and having a social networking profile that they set up two years ago," he said. "The main point is the profile of social networking users is getting older."
The very phrase "cool cyber kids" is hopelessly out of touch with the younger generation, let's break it down.
the cool kids are the trendsetters. Something that is already adopted by more than 10% of all age groups can not be trendy or cool in any way, it's just the status quo.
cyber is a word that could only be associated with cool 15-20 years ago. 10 years ago it was already tiredly rolling off the tongues of wrinkled white politicians to whom John McCain was a scrappy young upstart.
kids, well, now we're getting somewhere. If the 16-24 demographic is using Facebook less that's at least an interesting statistic, but it doesn't warrant this kind of inaccurate clumsy hipster wannabe title.
the cool kids are the trendsetters. Something that is already adopted by more than 10% of all age groups can not be trendy or cool in any way, it's just the status quo.
cyber is a word that could only be associated with cool 15-20 years ago. 10 years ago it was already tiredly rolling off the tongues of wrinkled white politicians to whom John McCain was a scrappy young upstart.
kids, well, now we're getting somewhere. If the 16-24 demographic is using Facebook less that's at least an interesting statistic, but it doesn't warrant this kind of inaccurate clumsy hipster wannabe title.
It also says this:
among 15-to 24-year-olds (...) data suggests they are spending less time on social networking sites.
among 15-to 24-year-olds (...) data suggests they are spending less time on social networking sites.
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Those stats don't show that 15- to 24-year-olds are moving away from facebook. Just that 25- to 34-year-olds are signing up at a faster rate.
I like the guardians "figures behind the story" stuff, really nice. But it does show they're relying on a percentage which means that if the overall percent of 15-24 yo using the net has increased then the absolute number using SNS (Social Networking Sites) could have actually increased.
Also, the figures look pretty bogus, apparently 22% of people age 15-24 have their own website? (this is not counting blogs or SNS, eg MySpace). I don't know a huge number of people in this age bracket but none have their own websites.
Also, the figures look pretty bogus, apparently 22% of people age 15-24 have their own website? (this is not counting blogs or SNS, eg MySpace). I don't know a huge number of people in this age bracket but none have their own websites.
Potentially great news for facebook, if they can maintain their growth while seeing an increase in the age of users. Older users have greater spending power making them a more valuable audience to advertisers.
Well said. As a college student, I'd be less than willing to whip out my credit card and purchase something off the web.
EDIT: Where "less than willing" means "OMG I HAZ NO CREDIT CARD!!1!"
EDIT: Where "less than willing" means "OMG I HAZ NO CREDIT CARD!!1!"
What is a cool cyberkid?
Oh man you soooo nailed it. Best video response ever.
"Ofcom research shows 5% drop in 15 to 24-year-olds using social networking sites"
What sort of conclusion can you draw from a single 5% change in data? What's the noise level in that sample?
What sort of conclusion can you draw from a single 5% change in data? What's the noise level in that sample?
Isn't that a 5% drop of 15-24 yo _online_ that are using SNS. So an increase in absolute users would create a decrease in %.
Great news for facebook et al! This must mean that they're going mainstream. Attracting the cool crowd as a business strategy is overrated imho.
Cool cyberkids never were on social networking sites. Heck, they never even used a browser. They mail themselves single webpages and check them out in GNUS. Cheech. Really.
Richard Stallman is kinda old to be called a "cool cyberkid", you know..
Compared to Donald Knuth he is young.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/03/value-social-net...
fits in, doesn't it
fits in, doesn't it