Death of Social Media?

[odysseus2000]

One can argue that Fool U.K. was one of the first social media sites, attracting commentators across a huge range of topics. But then the Fool discussion board were closed to new posts, suggesting that there was not enough profit in the operation.

The Lemon rose from this, but it does not seem to attract posters like the Fool used to, at least on this board.

Is all of this indicative the death of Social Media?

Regards,

[UncleIan]

Is all of this indicative the death of Social Media?

Not really no. Things have just moved on from discussion boards. Facebook was once the dominant player, but as far as I can see from the kids, it's instagram and snapchat and probably other things that I'm not even aware of. Plus chat (both text and vocal) whilst playing games.

[vrdiver]

One can argue that Fool U.K. was one of the first social media sites, attracting commentators across a huge range of topics. But then the Fool discussion board were closed to new posts, suggesting that there was not enough profit in the operation.

The Lemon rose from this, but it does not seem to attract posters like the Fool used to, at least on this board.

Is all of this indicative the death of Social Media?

Regards,

Well, Facebook is still growing and other social media are spreading (Twitter, Snapchat etc. etc.) More and more people have smartphones with which to access social media from anywhere, so I suspect the short answer is "no".

The Fool was (is) a special case of hosting social media in order to monetise it in a very specific way. When that wasn't working (writing on the wall from the time of the demise of Value Investor) the investors cut their losses.

Lemon Fool is a remarkable success: within a matter of days from MF's notice to close it was setup and harvested the "keenest" Fool posters. Many however would have drifted away, in the same way that a popular TV show will lose audience if it changes channels. However, if you come back in a few years time I suspect you will find not only the MF castaways, but Lemon Fools who were never Motley, all posting on whatever topic is of interest.

With the growth of the site will come other issues, my first thought is "cost". It won't surprise me to see limited advertising introduced, or a value-added service of some kind being offered to subscribers. Maybe there will be a physical LF HQ with employees and an option for us all to take part in an IPO?!

But I digress. Social Media is, IMHO, alive and well, but will continue to evolve.

VRD

[bungeejumper]

I might get shouted down here, but my understanding has always been that forum discussions like TMF or Lemon Fool aren't social media at all. Unlike TwitFace and the like, they don't operate primarily through groups of affiliated people ("friends", "followers", whatever) - instead, everything you write is visible to everyone, and all topics are organised into categories where any registered subscriber can contribute on an equal basis. No secret link-ups or team-building, no place for small gossip. Altogether more my sort of place.

Are social media dying? If it means that more people spend their working days working, then maybe that won't be such a bad thing.

BJ

[Lootman]

Facebook was once the dominant player, but as far as I can see from the kids, it's instagram and snapchat and probably other things that I'm not even aware of. Plus chat (both text and vocal) whilst playing games.

FYI, Instagram is owned by FaceBook

[stevensfo]

If TMF had been described as 'Social Media' they would probably closed down much sooner.

Much as I like and very much appreciate Lemonfool, TMF was easier to navigate and felt more like a place I wanted to come back to. Maybe it was because it had 'My Fool' with all my favourite boards and showed if any threads had received new posts.

The recs were very important. I think on the more silly boards, we all knew how to generate recs, but they were very useful on the more serious investing boards.

Finally, I used to love going back 10 years to Jokers corner and reading the well-recced jokes. Always cheered me up!

Steve

[DiamondEcho]

A couple of thoughts:
I don't think social media has died out, I think it's become so varied that large parts of it aren't on your own radar. I was rather surprised to recently learn that 'young people' these days think Facebook is old/boring, and they're all on Instagram and Snapchat. Am I inclined to go and check them out, no way! It's a shame as until 2-3 years ago it was a quick and simple way to keep in touch with my nieces and nephews.
Many of my friends in the professions back home are too, well, professional I suppose to post on Facebook. They don't need the visibility over their private lives, nor have the time to use it.
TMF was unusual in that it started out as being different and very useful. I worked for a major broker and each morning we'd have circulated copies of that days international press cuttings re: stocks, sectors, politics and so on. Included amongst them were opinions from TMF, perhaps as 'the voice of the considered little-guy'? Can you imagine TMF clips these days, which all seem to read like '20 bargain shares that will make you a fortune, sign up to our special offer for access now' being circulated on the trading floor of JP Goldman Stanley and Lynch Inc [or what ever] these days? What TMF had early on got copied by many many others, and killed their profits. The rise of home-computing/internet in the late-90s gave access to info for a new generation. When Fool.Com started charging a subscription for their fora [c2000?] most people left for alternatives. They reversed that model 2 years later.

Oh and before HTML coding and simple to use websites there was Usenet and newsgroups. But they were unmoderated and pretty wild-west in nature, hence of much diluted value.

[saechunu]

Mainstream social media: in the West comprising Facebook, also Snapchat, a little bit of Twitter just about hanging in there, and not really anyone else (WeChat in China + few others in Asia). Generalist in terms of subject coverage. A relentless focus on maximising user engagement, because user engagement equates to advertising revenues. These few goliath businesses are increasingly or exclusively mobile-first, app-based, walled-gardens whose value resides in the deep mines of information they hold on their products (ie. their users) and their monopoly-like positions.

Discussion forums and blog commenting: gazillions of disparate, mainly domain-specific, places for people to exchange information and ideas. Often web-based, rarely app-based. The content is the product, not so much the users, although much of it is generated by the users themselves. Not very (or even) profitable for the owners but highly useful to the users.


Hopefully the latter won't all get subsumed by the former, although this may be a tough ask as the megalomaniacs behind them would seemingly like to productize us all...

[supremetwo]

I'm astonished at the 'worth' with losses such as this:-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2 ... 5-billion/

Does it make any money?
In a word, no. Snap's losses actually increased last year from $372.9m to $514.6m, a lot of which was due to the extra cost of hosting all the pictures, videos and messages that run through Snapchat.
Since Snapchat was founded in 2011 it has racked up a total loss of $1.2 billion.

And as for Facebook, there are so many defunct accounts, plus others opened by children.

Any Lemons with any experience of Facebook advertising?

Does it result in lots of business?

[ErroneousBee]

Any Lemons with any experience of Facebook advertising?

Does it result in lots of business?

The Missus has a facebook page for a local retail outlet.

Its not very effective, but it only costs a tiny amount of time. It does engage with the handful of locals who are interested when you get new product lines in. It doesn't appear to attract people into the shop for sales. Local journalists might use it for research if the shop becomes relevant to a story.

I really doubt its at all useful for larger enterprises, nobody is going to subscribe to the facebook site of a chain-store unless you are a competitor.

For a genuinely defunct social media platform, look at LinkedIn. A recent show of hands at work indicated that no technical staff use it, not even to host a CV.

[saechunu]

Any Lemons with any experience of Facebook advertising?

Does it result in lots of business?

The Missus has a facebook page for a local retail outlet.

Its not very effective, but it only costs a tiny amount of time. It does engage with the handful of locals who are interested when you get new product lines in. It doesn't appear to attract people into the shop for sales. Local journalists might use it for research if the shop becomes relevant to a story.

I think you've misunderstood the question. I believe supremetwo is asking for feedback, on its effectiveness, from businesses who pay to advertise on Facebook owned properties (Facebook, Instagram, and sometime soon, WhatsApp).

Plenty of businesses are paying for such advertising, as FB revenue was $8.8B in its latest quarter (Q4 2016), being a 51% increase on the same quarter 1 year prior (Q4 2015). Clearly, many businesses do currently appear to believe it is something worth spending a (growing) proportion of their marketing budgets on.

[UncleIan]

Any Lemons with any experience of Facebook advertising?

Does it result in lots of business?

Yes and no. Depends what you mean by advertising. I run a couple of events for scouts from all over the place, and they "like" the pages, can send you messages, and you can put stuff out that may or may not appear on their timeline, depending on unknown and mystifying arcane dark arts of facebook feed rules. They are very useful I would say, for preaching to the choir, getting word out to people already interested enough to have like the page. I believe it's improved return business, but impossible to quantify.

I've tried the actual adverts a couple of times with mixed results, but basically I never seemed to be able to marry up what they say had happened with what really happened. Eg it would say that x number of people had liked my page, and charge me, but the number of actual new likes on the page was minimal. Something fishy was going on, I thought, I didn't trust any of the stats or numbers. Possibly it was serving the advert to fake accounts that would be liking the adverts, but were then quickly shut down. Not necessarily deliberate or malicious by facebook, one would hope. But I haven't bothered since.

The adverts might work better with a very focused target market.

[foundone]

For a genuinely defunct social media platform, look at LinkedIn. A recent show of hands at work indicated that no technical staff use it, not even to host a CV.

Maybe amongst permanent staff, but as an IT Contractor it is just about my best option. I change my status to available and job agencies start contacting me about possible positions. In fact updating my LinkedIn status and posting a new CV to Jobserve and CWJobs is the most effective way of getting new contracts, just sit back and wait for the phone calls from the agencies. If you actually follow the job sites and apply for the vacancies you quickly find that most are agencies phishing for hiring managers details or for jobs which they have already lined up interviews by contacting candidates directly based on CV scans.

[nicster]

Yep, LinkedIn is mainly a recruitment website, although like all these big (social) websites, its about the vast amounts of data that has the value. Hence Microsoft's purchase for $26 billion.

As for social advertising, i think it generally gives a better return for facebook/twitter/instagram, than the advertiser

First time post, long time lurker on here and MF (made one or two posts when a Div Edge subscriber)

nicster