• notExactlyI20@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Yo for real, what’s up with all these social media sites literally shooting themselves in the foot as we speak?.

    Youtube planning to antagonize adblock users and limiting video watching, Reddit killing itself with bureocracy style and now Twitter doing this shit. Hopefully shit sites like TikTok or Facebook jump on the wagon too.

    • ashok36@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      For reddit at least, The money from VCs dried up. They have to monetise fast or go broke.

      Elon way way way overplayed for Twitter and the company is hemorrhaging money paying the loans he took out to pay for the purchase.

      Google in general is in decline. Ad sales are down as the net becomes SEO’d to death. Marketing teams just aren’t willing to pay for Google ads like they used to since the roi isn’t there anymore.

      • fidodo@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        But there are so many ways Reddit could have played this better. It wasn’t just about monetizing. The API changes were in bad faith and meant to kill 3rd party apps without flat out doing it. Users would have been understanding if they charged a reasonable amount of started injecting ads into the API feeds, but instead they went full aggro and disrespected not just the devs working to make their platform better, but the users as well. If they wanted 3rd party apps to show their ads or charge a fee to remove ads I would have been understanding, but because of the disrespect I’ve dropped them.

        • SwallowsDick@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          That plus their own app being abysmal. The official Reddit app is a terrible experience without the necessary features of the old ones

        • jscummy
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          1 year ago

          I forgot the actual numbers, but it’s downright bizarre that Reddit can’t figure out how to make money. They have a massive platform that is user-moderated for free, filled with free user-created content, with third party developers creating solid apps and features, again for free. Reddit should be able to do fuck all and make money

          • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            but it’s downright bizarre that Reddit can’t figure out how to make money.

            Because of (venture) capitalism…

            They made more from people giving it to them. If the company posted a profit, they’d have to pay taxes

            So they pay themselves and amass assets.

            If it fails you keep your salary and sell the assets. If you owe more than that’s worth, declare bankruptcy. If not, collect a check.

            Startups stay in this phase right up till IPO, where they try to flip to profits as fast as possible. Then you can not only declare x profits, but y% increase in profits.

            Tldr:

            They’re nonprofitable by choice. This method just doesn’t work during a recession.

      • knightry@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        In general, i agree with your post, but GOOG is up ~ 30% in the last 6 months. Specific parts of Google may be dwindling but their overall business is thriving right now.

        • SJ_Zero@lemmy.fbxl.net
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          1 year ago

          The stock is not the company, that’s important to remember. The PE ratios for tech companies are totally out of whack compared to basically any other company.

          Google stock is doing ok in part because they have Bard which means they’re participating in the AI boom. I think that’s going to turn out to be mostly hot air, but in the meantime it’s helping a small number of companies stay afloat

      • DMmeYourNudes@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Idk where you got the idea that Google is in decline, but they’re still the leader in search and advertising on the Internet, plus video hosting and livstreaming with YouTube. Googles only problem right now is how behind they are on AI and that they can’t support a new product so no one is willing to try anything new they make.

      • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        I really hope this the end of an era of milking the users for data and then selling that for ad money. Twitter and Facebook are switching to a subscription model, but I’m not so sure it’s actually going to reduce the amount of data they try to get from everyone.

    • Unaffiliated_User@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Twitter successfully sold itself to a private investment firm for over market value. That’s the dream for tech startups and never-made-a-profit digital services.

      Anyone still using Twitter is an addict or a boomer, but that’s exactly the audience that Musk wanted to purchase.

      • Corkyskog
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        1 year ago

        The only reason twitter was popular is because you could check it for information. Towns and organizations would post updates there, it drove traffic, eyeballs, ads and revenue. This is the dumbest thing ever, even if he wanted to promote nazi ideology, it’s idiotic because your only preaching to the choir. You cannot convert people when you drive them all away, so even if it wasn’t about money, it’s dumb.

      • SolarNialamide@slrpnk.net
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        1 year ago

        I maybe check facebook once every few months, and that’s only if someone sends me a link to an event. And it seems like almost everyone has left or is at least not active. A few years ago (well, maybe more than a few, time flies) I was pretty active and my feed would be full of my friends’ status updates. I would actually see what they were up to if I went on Facebook. Now only a handful of my Facebook friends are still active, and they’re all 35+ and have their own business or project of some kind that they want to share updates of. Not mlm since they’re all hippies; things like a community garden, handmade stuff, musicians, but still something to promote. It takes me 30 seconds to see everything. Most of my Facebook friends haven’t posted anything in years or months, just like me.

    • Nanachi@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Big social media companies are sometimes like lemmings- if one jumps off a cliff, others generally follow it because they did so

    • Meowoem
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      1 year ago

      The tin foil part of my brain says that they’re trying to destroy media ahead of the election so they can control the narrative but really I think it’s just that we’ve reached a point where no one is pouring free money into literally any old internet nonsense and it’s turned out that this ‘they’re selling your data and making billions!’ was never actually very true.

      They pushed their website as ‘we’re having massive growth and with enough investment we can dominate the market!’ so all the idiot ‘angel Investors’ threw monkey into it but that can only last so long before people say ‘ok you dominate the market, now what?!’

    • lnsfwuser@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 year ago

      The world is starting to wise up to the fact that online advertising is nearly 100% fraudulent so they aren’t buying online ads as much.

    • Meowoem
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      1 year ago

      The tin foil part of my brain says that they’re trying to destroy media ahead of the election so they can control the narrative but really I think it’s just that we’ve reached a point where no one is pouring free money into literally any old internet nonsense and it’s turned out that this ‘they’re selling your data and making billions!’ was never actually very true.

      They pushed their website as ‘we’re having massive growth and with enough investment we can dominate the market!’ so all the idiot ‘angel Investors’ threw monkey into it but that can only last so long before people say ‘ok you dominate the market, now what?!’