{"id":384,"date":"2012-10-21T02:28:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-21T02:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/21\/unsocial-media-the-uselessness-of-facebook-and-google\/"},"modified":"2012-10-21T02:28:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-21T02:28:00","slug":"unsocial-media-the-uselessness-of-facebook-and-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/21\/unsocial-media-the-uselessness-of-facebook-and-google\/","title":{"rendered":"Unsocial Media: The Uselessness Of Facebook And Google+"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Warren Ellis says:]
Unsocial Media: The Uselessness Of Facebook And Google+<\/a>:
Google+ is apparently a success, according to many tech reporters.\u00a0 Anecdotal evidence suggests that most people are using G+ to post inside Circles.\u00a0 Some 11,000 people have added me to G+ circles \u2013 but, apparently, none of the ones they post to.\u00a0 Of the 150+ people I had in circles, precisely three of them posted content I could see.\u00a0 When I posted content, only a thin fraction of those 11000 people could see it, because at some point I got tuned out by the system.\u00a0 G+ is therefore useless to me, and I just nuked my circles.
Facebook Pages allow some 16% of the people who clicked Like on a Page to see the posts from that Page.\u00a0 Regardless of whether or not those people specifically requested those posts in their News Feed.\u00a0 If a Page owner wants to access the eyeballs of more of the people who clicked Like on a Page because they wanted to see that Page\u2019s posts, that Page owner has to pay to Promote those posts.\u00a0 I would currently have to pay USD $10 to ensure that all the people who Liked the official Warren Ellis Page<\/a> on Facebook actually saw one single post.\u00a0\u00a0 Facebook Pages are therefore useless to me.\u00a0
(Of the 150+ people I had as Friends on my personal page, maybe five people were aware I was actually there, so I\u2019ve nuked my friends list there, too.)
None of this is important<\/em>, you understand.\u00a0 But I\u2019ve not been paying a huge amount of attention to social media this year.\u00a0 Until it became time to start thinking about raising awareness of GUN MACHINE.\u00a0 So I\u2019ve had to dig into this a bit \u2013 I\u2019ve been talking about this in the newsletter, too.\u00a0
Facebook, in search of monetisation, has killed engagement \u2013 unless your brand is so big that you are in fact desperate to pay for connection.\u00a0 Because small brands like me can move around, but big brands have to be seen in the big places.\u00a0 The Facebook Page is now completely broken unless you open your wallet.
And who the fuck even knows how Google+ works now.\u00a0 It is, in its way, the most \u201cservice-y\u201d of the social network sites \u2013 now the dust has settled, it really seems to be a souped-up version of Google Groups, with built-in discovery and significant tech enhancements like Hangouts.\u00a0 A service, not a network.
None of this is important<\/em>, but it is interesting to me.\u00a0
Facebook will have to rely on big companies for one of its revenue streams, driving the small-fry like me out of the Pages system and possibly off Facebook entirely.\u00a0 People like me will probably keep a FB account alive, though, and maybe even use it to log into things, thereby sending data back that they can sell in another revenue stream.\u00a0 FB won\u2019t care that I\u2019m not running a Page. In theory, by usurping the \u201csingle sign-on\u201d role that things like OAuth were supposed to fill, Facebook gets data to sell without even having to run a social network.<\/em>
Google doubtless gathers enough data about me in other ways that my non-use of G+ won\u2019t matter a whit.\u00a0 They felt that they had to have a social network, but they are not a social network company, and don\u2019t need to run a social network in order to do their business<\/em>.
Perhaps you could add \u201cthe death of the social network\u201d to \u201cthe death of blogging\u201d in the media-headline scare list.\u00a0 Replace it with pervasive digital loyalty, <\/em>maybe.
Whatever it is, it\u2019s no bloody use for hearing from people, or talking to a crowd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Warren Ellis says:]Unsocial Media: The Uselessness Of Facebook And Google+:Google+ is apparently a success, according to many tech reporters.\u00a0 Anecdotal evidence suggests that most people are using G+ to post inside Circles.\u00a0 Some 11,000 people have added me to G+ circles \u2013 but, apparently, none of the ones they post to.\u00a0 Of the 150+ people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-6c","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}