The problem with some of (all of?) these is that it's becoming increasingly moot to bother posting. I posted back in the early days of social media to share with my friends. In response, my friends and acquaintances kept me up to date with their lives. Now the apps only bother to show me friend/following posts if they deem it matches my interests.
I understand that this sort of algorithmic feed likely matches the metrics to keep people scrolling. This would also track with every app moving away from "friend" verbiage to something like followers, subscribers, or members. Users are encouraged to post _to_ their audience rather than sharing _with_ their friends.
In addition, it feels like the past 5 years have brought on more marketing spam. I've been slowly reappearing onto marketing lists that I either never signed up for or unsubscribed from. They're coming from legitimate companies that I've done business with.
The people that's a problem for don't understand this fact. Of the ones that do, there's upper management and/or shareholder pressure for profits now. It's a can that infinitely gets kicked down the road until they reach a dead end.
I think a lot of people are missing that eBay bought TCG Player back in 2022. This would fold the TCG Player brand into GameStop. Many (most?) local game stores list their inventory on TCG Player. In addition to the physical stores themselves, GameStop would have their hand in nearly every digital trading card transaction. GameStop would own the TGC Player warehouses and inventory.
You also have to be "all in", so to speak, in order to participate. I can window or minimize a screen on a PC. I can pause a game on a console. I'm immediately aware of my surroundings in both cases. With a VR headset, I have to physically remove the headset before I see where I am within physical space.
It feels so silly expressing this, but the act of putting on a headset that completely engulfs my vision with screens, even if my space is already clear with a boundary, feels like a much bigger commitment than opening Steam. It doesn't matter if I'm standing for room scale or if I'm already seated with the headset next to me. Both cases feel like extra effort for a lesser experience.
> What I'm suggesting is a low risk way to see if an engineer has an aptitude for aligning the roadmap with what the users want. If they aren't great at it, they can go back to engineering. We also know for sure that they are technically competent since they are currently working as an engineer, no risk there.
It doesn't have to be the most socially competent engineer to gather feedback. Having the engineering team sit with the target users gives so much insight into how the product is being used.
I once worked on an administrative tool at a financial institution. There were lots of pain points, as it started as a dev tool that turned into a monstrosity for the support staff. We asked to have a meeting with some reps who were literally 2 floors below us. Having the reps talk as they worked with the tool in real time over 1 hour was worth more than a year's worth of feedback that trickled in. It's one thing to solicit feedback. It's another to see how idiosyncrasies shape how products get used.
> Google Search has gone so far downhill. I'm not sure what they're optimising for. Long-term irrelevance, it seems.
I assume they're optimizing for the most common denominator: standard, non-power users. Early search didn't return great results for human-like questions such as What are the wavelengths of the colors on the visible spectrum? The result might be within the first two pages, but that query had too many irrelevant search terms. A better query would have been wavelengths color visible spectrum. That query only has the necessary key terms. Sometimes queries required the user to know search operators (e.g. exact match, date range, synonyms) just to get relevant results.
The average person probably didn't know that early searches gave better results when constructed in the second way. Google changed search to adapt to how normal people search. Now the human-like query will return good results. Combine that with locales, search history, and personal interests, even the most basic user can get worthwhile results from asking Google question. The cost is that power users who understand operators and the power of key terms get less relevant results but likely still correct.
I understand that this sort of algorithmic feed likely matches the metrics to keep people scrolling. This would also track with every app moving away from "friend" verbiage to something like followers, subscribers, or members. Users are encouraged to post _to_ their audience rather than sharing _with_ their friends.