I'm remembering again why I despise Facebook. When you put something on Steemit, if people who follow you happen to be online within a few hours of your posting, they will see it in their feed. But on FB they can be sitting right there and FB will decide if it wants to show it to them or not.
It's so messed up how much I got used to changing what I posted to try to conform to their algorithm so that people would see my content. And for what? Not to make me any money. Just to benefit my friends with the information I was trying to share with them. But FB is the one who decides whether that is to happen or not.
The only reason I deal with it at all is because Steemit is still too complicated for most of the people I know to be willing to use it. Even the handful I've convinced to join don't really do anything on here. It's asking too much of them, and the potential for money is just not enough of a draw. They don't actually mind not making money on FB. They even put up with not being able to count on seeing things or having others see their content. Why?
Because what they value is simply the convenience and passivity. It asks little of them, and yet gives them some window into what's going on in the lives of people they know anywhere in the country or even anywhere in the world. The tradeoff for them is worth it.
Steemit is hard. You have to be committed to connect with new people here. And if you want to just connect with people you already know, you'll find they aren't already here and it's nearly impossible to get them to come here.
So yeah, I still wind up sometimes dealing with Facebook. But every time I do it just reminds me why I usually don't. And then FB has the nerve to popup a notification saying that my fans would like for me to post again because I haven't posted in a while. Yeah right.
@indigoocean This - is so true! But that is what makes the whole experience fulfilling rather than our minds being switched onto autopilot mode when scrolling mindlessly through FB.
Yes, I love it here. Actually the one thing I don't love is that I can get all the people I want to be here to come here. If my friends and family were on here this would be just about the only place online I'd hang out.
Yeahhh! I know some Steemians who managed to get their loved ones onboard, and it's somehow just very heartwarming haha (:
I was actually an early adopter on Facebook too. I got on in 2005, back when you needed a college e-mail address to use it. Back then it had a similar feeling to what Steemit has now. It was a bit exclusive, and at that time a welcome alternative to the then spam filled MySpace.
Now I feel like Facebook has hit that tipping point. There's just very little value there it seems like. Lots of political opinions, tons of useless uninteresting information, but like you said, it's easy, it doesn't require any effort on your part.
The steep learning curve of Steemit is something I've written about in the past and imho, the biggest barrier to entry to Steem getting mainstream adoption. The most basic premise is definitely compelling. "It's a social media platform where the likes are worth money" That's my best one liner, and with that I think most people would be interested enough to give it a shot, but when they get here, they'd have to take a seminar to get up to speed in less than weeks if not months. Hopefully this changes in the near future, I have faith it will.
Bingo! I actually created a video and text online training for my friends so that when I would ask them to come try it I could also give them that to get them started. And you know, of the 5 people who did start that way, not one of them is regularly posting, and most aren't posting anymore at all. People really don't want to work that hard unless they're getting paid by the hour for guaranteed returns from hour one. There is something of an entrepreneurial mindset needed here, as well as liking to figure things out and learn new things.
I feel the same my good friend, cause Steemit is hard, I have a hard time getting people to come here also. I have this one classmate that would be great here but she has never came over. You remind me of her because of your intelligence.
Thx for the compliment. Yeah, it's unfortunate. Perhaps someday there will be a frontend and new user process that is more use friendly and then more people can find it easy enough to participate here.
I have been finished with facebook for a long time now. Something changed around 2015 where my feed was just relentlessly bombarded with videos and ads about content I had no interest in. Actually finding what I wanted just become a frustrating exercise. I also feel the platform just ended up encouraging group think with people trying to score 'social points'.
For me now, I much prefer Steemit.
Yeah, I'm getting to that point myself. Having family and friends spread out so much around the world keeps me anchored there, simply because for me the "too much effort" would be keeping up with all those people one by one. But ultimately the ratio of work of weeding through crap, or putting out quality content only to have no one even see it because the algorithm doesn't like it... well that may eventually become the deciding factor. But I do prefer Steemit and read much more on here, plus only put anything really substantial here. I mostly do livestreaming on there though, because I don't do that on steem at all yet.
I was on Facebook this week too, for the first time in ages. And discovered a load of messages people had left for me that I missed. No matter how often I tell people I don't do FB anymore they still try and contact me there.
Having people who signed up to my feed not seeing what I posted was my biggest frustration too @indigoocean.
But when I was back there this week I realised how much I missed the groups I was in, especially for my art. There just aren't enough people on Steemit to have the level of inspiration and atctivity I experienced on FB.
Even so, I won't be going back any time soon but Steemit is not an alternative option.
The barrier to entry is high in terms of the learning it takes to be here and the people with the power just don't seem interested to understand what it's like nowadays for new people joining. They clearly have no clue.
Anyway. Rant over. Have a wonder full weekend. 💙
LOL it’s so funny to hear that people try to message you there even though you’ve told them you aren’t there. My crazy landlord wants to communicate with me on FB! I told her in no uncertain terms absolutely not. People can get so dependent on that site. They don’t realize what they’re missing. But then we do also miss out on things like groups.
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Yep. It's the groups I miss most @indigoocean, especially for the art and creativity.
It's not like the people messaging me are strangers. You'd have thought they would remember I'm not on there anymore when they get no response. 😂
That's the main problem in my opinion. Although I admit there's plenty to be made to improve the user's experience on various Steem DApps, I'd hate to reach a point where Steem ecosystem will turn us into vegetables like FB does. Before that will happen, it will be time for me to look for something else.
Otherwise, I'm glad I found a good pretext to close my personal FB account this spring.
LOL I’m still not where I can close my account without missing out on some important stuff with my family, but I definitely get wanting to.
I wonder if people could ever be as passive on here. For one thing, you have to work so hard here to build a following. Also money is involved. People tend to have something to say about how things work when money is involved.
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I stay away from facebook as much as I can although it is sometimes the main source of communication of long time distant friends and family. I think it will only be a matter of time when a STEEM App will come along and directly compete with Facebook and its family centric approach. I also think the main advantage and reason that facebook saw exponential growth was the creation of their mobile app which easily connected and had a great interface for its users. If that could also be achieved here, it would also lead to growth that could rival facebook and other social platforms.
Really good point. Mobile is the key, especially with young people. But the "family-centric approach" of which you speak I think is equally important. I love the substantive conversation on here, but it's not exactly geared toward 13 year olds. And few people seem to bother with the NSFW filters.
When someone copies my 4K video from YouTube and uploads a 720p version to their own FB account, it gets 1400 views in less than 2 days; until I shut him down. If I convert my original to 1080p and upload it to my FB account, it gets 10 views if I'm lucky :/
One finger salute warranted.
Wow! I've never even experienced that side of it. Even worse than I thought. They are terrible in so many ways.
Sometimes I get emails from friends telling me they found my work plagiarized on FB. It's the reason I have a FB account; I only joined about 1.5 years ago so I could verify the videos were my work. I did find that FB is a convenient way to get in touch with musicians all over; something I often need to get permission to publish their original compositions. I don't want any copyright issues. Just burns me that a thief would get the views while I don't. If the work was worth stealing I figure it's worth the views going to the original creator.
There is a lot to that algorithm. The thieving account probably posts often, has a lot of followers who react, and promotes their posts on other social media accounts. You are also uploading directly to FB and that counts for something, but other than that you may not be doing as many of the things FB likes. Bottom line, FB has given more authority to their entire account than to yours, so anything they post will get wider exposure.
I had the same experience with two of my own accounts. If I post on one of my pages, maybe 3 people will see it. Post the same thing on another of my pages and hundreds will be shown it, even though both have roughly the same number of followers. These things above are what differentiate those two accounts.
That's what I mean by my having had to adapt my behavior to fit their algo. I know what they want me to do, and I have done it in the past. But I'm fed up with it.
In one case the FB account belonged to a Bar owner who used my video to promote the band playing at his club. All he had to do is link to my YT video, but instead he decided to copy it. If he had only asked, I would have made him a video with the Bar info in it, ..for free.
I know how to manipulate Search engines and such, but I just don't feel like gaming the system after 2 days of recording/editing, and yes, his account has many followers and activity.
For me FB is just a means of communication, sometimes I ignore it for weeks if I don't need it.
I basically never really use facebook now, only to chat now and then to friends. Nearly everyone I know wouldn't be able to deal with Steemit instead along with know anything about crypto, but give it a couple years and crypto will be even more mainstream.
Yes, I really look forward when there are normalized crypto social media sites where there is no central authority deciding what people should see.
Btw, did you know that with HF20 if you vote on a post in the first 15 mins. part of the rewards to back into the rewards pool instead of paying out to you, the author, or other upvoters? It's a new feature. Basically means you should ideally wait to upvote until min. 15 or at least close to that. Thanks for the support though!
Yeah I remember about that, I just woke up though and am super sore today. So not with it haha.
LOL! Gotcha. Feel better.
oh, ahah. I feel your pain. I've just started posting on my blog page again and it is very frustrating and defeating. I don't often go on to read posts because they seem to be mostly ads targeting me (poorly I might ad - fashion and weight loss are not my thing). I second the middle finger salute to FB.
Oh don't even get me started about how bad my feed on there is. I try not to use it at all, but unfortunately my friends and family do post their updates there, so I lose track of these little things going on in their lives I really do want to know about if I never look at the feed.
But nothing of any substance will be shown to me. FB allows shots of meals, "where in the world" airport check-ins, babies/cats/dogs, and so on. Definitely lots of ads for improving my weight, skin, attire, and real estate investing. This is what the company has decided is in my best interest.
Exactly! I think Steemit is qualitatively different in that regard. Many posts (if you discount spam) are actually of good quality. Thought-provoking. (:
I find so many great posts on here that I honestly can't even keep up with all the ones I would like to read.
the only reason i use fb is to catch up with friends and relatives that are living far from me and to arrange coffees and outside activities. Now that fb messenger exists i only use this!
Totally makes sense. If I didn't have to find out about little things going on with my family (especially my nieces and nephews) by reading what they post in my feed, I'd probably only use messenger too. But you know, FB is now putting ads there too! But at least they let through messages by anyone you're friends with.
Facebook to me is a an online contact saver. I do not use it for much. My commitment to steemit has pushed me further away from other social media platforms, they don't worth my time anymore
So true. It is a good contact manager!
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