[compactmani]

I see the optimization problem they face. Promote non-personal content to generate short term revenue versus promote personal content to minimize long-term churn. It looks like their data scientists and business analysts have identified significant risk to pursuing the former and advocate the latter, for now.

In other words this has nothing to do with a return to claimed core values, but a shift in strategy to remain afloat for as long as possible.

[aleem]

The real problem is a post IPO Facebook and its obligation to make money. Intimacy isn't profitable and there is no money in sharing personal photos. Publisher content has money but FB risks becoming a feed of useless updates and viral fluff. Within this space, text is a poor revenue generator but video has the highest CPM so we are seeing a major shift to video. FB's $50mn payouts to BuzzFeed and the like shows their commitment to viral junk. The watermelon live video gimmick isn't long term sustainable. FB is losing the plot it seems. There was a time when people used to post pics of things they ate and do FB checkins everywhere they went. It got people on board but other than on-boarding it proved to be just a fad.

I imagine the long term strategy will be to selectively optimize feeds based on user prefs. Not everyone values intimacy and some people prefer BuzzFeed cruft on a daily basis.

Unfortunately intimacy is hard to measure while sharing and content generation makes for easy KPIs for exec to focus on. Focusing on these will treat the symptoms but not the cause. In fact if sharing and recirculation is a KPI then FB will increasingly gravitate toward Twitter.

However this is all backwards. Monetizing the users is a piss poor business model. It fucks up the UX and alienates the users. FB should move to other avenues. Personalized search or ecommerce or premium SMB accounts should be the bigger focus.

Aside, their move into messaging reminds me of Microsoft's play when they leveraged Hotmail users into MSN and virtually overnight, uprooted ICQ/AOL.

[onewaystreet]

> Intimacy isn't profitable and there is no money in sharing personal photos.

Facebook makes money as long as users continue using its services. It doesn't matter much what they are doing as long as they keep coming back.

[nl]

And then, back in reality, FB is minting money.

Advertising has been a huge business for the last 100 years (or more) and it is all going to move online.

The more people deploy adblockers, the more FB makes: (statistically) everyone on mobile access it (and other FB-owned brands) via the app, so they get the revenue of the money that would go to the open web.

[tajen]

Everyone props up "Growth Hacking" when what we need is product managers who have a feeling of how to please customers on the long term.