| Here is some speculation on my part, perhaps totally incorrect. The three social platforms with non-chronological timelines now: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, may all be seeing diminishing engagement from critical demographics (16-21.) Users log in less, so by "rewarding" them with the stickiest post when the do happen to log in, it appears to increase the retention of those cohorts. Power users are following/friends with a lot of other users. If 1,000 - 2,000 people are followed there is a lot of noise. This also presents opportunities to completely bury the less sticky content, which also results in increasing ad revenue from publishers who got addicted to the free traffic (with "sticky" ads being rewarded with cheaper clickthroughs.) The chronology complaint is interesting because reddit & hacker news have a similar sorting algorithm (voting, but with other complexities thrown in.) You log in, look, and log off. A compulsive user may check hourly. There are definitely problems with dynamic sorting. Noisy producers may become more noisier because less of their stuff is being shown. Other users may not bother posting at all because they don't expect anyone to see what they posted. That audience is going to feel comfortable if another platform offers them a place they feel they are being heard. Whatever the numbers show right now, the longer term retention cohorts have yet to be seen by anyone. Despite monster ad revenue I am not convinced that Facebook has made a "slam dunk" on social media and will be the last man standing. |