What is it about Facebook that makes some people LOSE THEIR MINDS?

It's kind of amusing. Or frightening. Depends on how you look at it.

First, there are the users. Every single time /anything/ about Facebook 
changes /in any way/, millions of angry messages appear about how "teh 
new FB SUX0RZ!". People create pages like "if 8M people link to this 
page then Facebook will revert the latest changes". And so on.

Are people seriously THAT BORED that this is the most interesting thing 
they could find to talk about? I mean, yeah, the page layout trivially 
changed in some cosmetic way. And I care because...? In every case I've 
seen, these "radical site redesigns" are about as radical as the 
difference between Office 2000 and Office 2003 - i.e., they changed some 
of the colours, and moved a few buttons around. Oh, and there might be a 
couple of tiny changes which really /are/ new features.

Then there are the media companies:

http://tinyurl.com/6bkyt22

"The service will be free, but we're hoping it will drive paid 
subscriptions."

Uh, yeah, IN WHICH UNIVERSE? Seriously, that's like saying "we're going 
to stand on street corners and give away free Milkybars(tm). We're 
hoping that if we do this, more people will go out and find places to 
buy Milkybars(tm)." WTF? That is so /obviously/ never going to work. OK, 
a tiny few people might not have tasted it before and might really like 
it. But the rest of us are just going to buy exactly the same number of 
Milkybars as before.

And then there's this:

http://tinyurl.com/5sq6cdd

I think that kind of neatly describes it. Big companies are like "OMGZ, 
there are XXX billion people on Facebook! If we could just 'be on 
Facebook', we could have XXX billion customers!!!" Um, yeah, that 
doesn't actually WORK, dude. :-P Besides, at least half of those 
accounts are people's pets. (Possibly pet rocks.) That graph makes it 
plain. ;-)

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3) People who complain about FB complainers. (not complaining, just citing).

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On Tue, 27 Sep 2011 16:22:00 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> "The service will be free, but we're hoping it will drive paid
> subscriptions."
> 
> Uh, yeah, IN WHICH UNIVERSE? Seriously, that's like saying "we're going
> to stand on street corners and give away free Milkybars(tm). We're
> hoping that if we do this, more people will go out and find places to
> buy Milkybars(tm)." WTF? That is so /obviously/ never going to work. OK,
> a tiny few people might not have tasted it before and might really like
> it. But the rest of us are just going to buy exactly the same number of
> Milkybars as before.

Obviously, you can't give something away for free forever and expect 
people to pay for the same thing.

But that's not typically how it works.  There are two variants to this 
that actually do work:

1.  Offer it for free for a limited time, then charge for the service.

2.  Offer a free service and a tiered pay-for service.

Jim

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On 27-9-2011 20:04, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Sep 2011 16:22:00 +0100, Invisible wrote:
>
>> "The service will be free, but we're hoping it will drive paid
>> subscriptions."
>>
>> Uh, yeah, IN WHICH UNIVERSE? Seriously, that's like saying "we're going
>> to stand on street corners and give away free Milkybars(tm). We're
>> hoping that if we do this, more people will go out and find places to
>> buy Milkybars(tm)." WTF? That is so /obviously/ never going to work. OK,
>> a tiny few people might not have tasted it before and might really like
>> it. But the rest of us are just going to buy exactly the same number of
>> Milkybars as before.
>
> Obviously, you can't give something away for free forever and expect
> people to pay for the same thing.
>
> But that's not typically how it works.  There are two variants to this
> that actually do work:
>
> 1.  Offer it for free for a limited time, then charge for the service.
>
> 2.  Offer a free service and a tiered pay-for service.

Obligatory youtube reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNWvdtt5sxs
I was looking for the live version, but this will do.

-- 
Apparently you can afford your own dictator for less than 10 cents per 
citizen per day.

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On 27/09/2011 05:48 PM, gregjohn wrote:
> 3) People who complain about FB complainers. (not complaining, just citing).

I don't know about "complaining". Actually I think I said it's "amusing"...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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You know what I really hate?  How dumb lamb love walled gardens. 
Facebook is nothing but ancient Personal Home Pages, only without the 
blinking tag.  But on a closed network instead on the internet. 
Likewise, most iOS apps are web pages closed and recoded in Object C. 
And the cattle love how the grass is so much more greener than the green 
grass outside...

God bless email.

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