I guess I am too slow in that I opened a Facebook account for the first time ever in may 2012 and it was where everybody seemed to be at, only for a couple years later everybody started to open a parallel Instagram account - I never could understand why people would want to use another thing additional to a thing that could do the same?
In those years you could notice Facebook became a wasteland, the Cambridge analytica scandal surfaced and got so stressed just by opening the app - I deleted my account in 2018. But for my surprise, people around here seems to be quite happy with Facebook (which here in Latin America seems to refuse to die!), Instagram, twitter, Snapchat and now tik tok accounts - how do they handle all of that?
The same way people handle Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote. They fulfill different functions to different people. I could do notes, make spreadsheets, or produce presentations in any one of those apps, but each task is more or less practical in each tool.
I haven't used social media in a while, but when I did they fulfilled these separate functions:
Facebook - Keeping up to data with family (or anyone over the age of 40). Communicating with Social groups/organizing events. Messaging friends and family with Messenger.
Instagram - Maintaining a photo diary of my life. Sharing what I'm doing currently with friends. Following celebrities. Messaging.
Twitter - Following celebrities, but textually rather than with video stories. Keeping up to date on current events and trends.
Snapchat - To be honest, Instagram stole SnapChats cake completely for me when they made Stories. Younger generations use it more from my experience. Used it largely for messaging without a paper trail.
TikTok - Entertainment and following social trends. It's like YouTube, but with a better recommendation algorithm and shorter form videos.
Instagram was much simpler back then. It wasn't a general social media platform, it was just for posting square images with captions. No DMs, no videos, no stories (that wasn't even a thing back then really), no status updates, etc. And it was only accessible on smartphones.
And that was around the time Facebook's original audience had their parents joining Facebook, making it less of a safe/cool place to screw around with your friends. Instagram had less appeal to parents because of all those limitations, so young people migrated there. Eventually the parents got on Instagram too, and they moved to Snapchat, which has so far done a pretty good job at being indecipherable to older generations, and focuses on making everything private, only sending stuff to people directly or whitelisted groups of people who can see your stories. Not to mention, everything having an expiration date means people won't be able to scroll back and see cringey/embarrassing posts you made a few years ago.
The Facebook experience seems to depends a lot on the age group. For the older than 1970s age group, Facebook experience is very similar to what early Facebook was for high school and universities in the 2000s. With lots of photo updates from friends.
Facebook Marketplace and Groups have nearly killed off hobby forums and Craiglist. I have an account for that purpose specifically. I don't even have a single friend on FB and it seems to really bug them -- I get a prompt to befriend at least one person from a list when I log in.
In those years you could notice Facebook became a wasteland, the Cambridge analytica scandal surfaced and got so stressed just by opening the app - I deleted my account in 2018. But for my surprise, people around here seems to be quite happy with Facebook (which here in Latin America seems to refuse to die!), Instagram, twitter, Snapchat and now tik tok accounts - how do they handle all of that?