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Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook

nytimes.com

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Re: Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook

#11

Post by mtrpcic »

IBM wrote: post #4
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #2

Remember when people kept claiming Facebook buying Instagram wasn't a bad thing because "they're not ruining it" "They're just leaving it as the same old Instagram".

Uh that's what they've done. The article is about Instagram becoming like Facebook in the sense that this is a massive property on the scale of the core Facebook product. 700 million users vs Facebook's 2 billion.

Facebook has definitely not left it as the "same old Instagram". They've changed the home feed algorithm to basically the same as the Facebook home feed algorithm, and there's been a lot of content creators negatively impacted by it (I know this because of the industry my wife works in, which is having major issues now, where engagement has basically halved among anybody except the top maybe 5% of content creators).

Re: Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook

#12

Post by rhizome »

jacksnipe wrote: post #9
pmarreck wrote: post #6

There are things out there, great things, just struggling to be the next whatever. There should be a way to look past the eclipse of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.

I'm pretty sure Snapchat already was the next whatever

Is it still?

Re: Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook

#13

Post by BurningFrog »

_m8fo wrote: post #5

What exactly is the end goal of these advertising platforms, exactly? Ads in my mind are zero sum, so I'm pretty clueless on this front. One thing I find interesting is the simultaneous popularity of these newfound distractions and task/project management software. Are we solving problems that were intentionally created and calling that progress?

Ads definitely create value.

You can think of them as improved communication that connects people who are useful to each other.

Re: Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook

#14

Post by mattbettinson »

immad wrote: post #7
_m8fo wrote: post #5

What exactly is the end goal of these advertising platforms, exactly? Ads in my mind are zero sum, so I'm pretty clueless on this front. One thing I find interesting is the simultaneous popularity of these newfound distractions and task/project management software. Are we solving problems that were intentionally created and calling that progress?

Ads over time extract profit margins from all other industries. For example at least 50% of all profits from mobile games are spent on acquiring users from ads.

Do you have a source on that? I'm not challenging, I believe it, I just wanna see some proof

Re: Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook

#15

Post by l33tbro »

It's disappointing that tech journalists don't go a bit harder at the founders when writing pieces like these. Sure, it's interesting to find out about Instagram's internal processes and their projections, but Facebook is becoming increasingly regarded as being the main contributor to a new kind of social malaise. Therefore, if Instagram is aspiring to that level of adoption, how can questions like this not be put to the founders?

Maybe it's just me, but for once I'd love to see a journalist be a bit more frank with these siloed cyber-utopionists and ask some hard questions about what social value they're actually creating - rather than chewing over sign-up metrics and scaling strategies. Anecdotally, I've never seen one interview with Zuckerberg where a journalist actually calls him out on his "we're just connecting people" poppycock.

Re: Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook

#17

Post by bgwhn »

nvalleysilico wrote: post #8

Google has never had to buy a competitor as its revenue, scientific and technology value is orders of magnitude greater than facebook et al. I'm looking for the next Google not the next facebook/myspace/snapchat/instagram.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...

Web search engines:

- Outride (2001)

- Kaltix (2003)

- Akwan Information Technologies (2005)

- Orion (2006)

- Aardvark (2010)

- PlinkArt (2010)

- Metaweb (2010)

- Like.com (2010)

- Apture (2011)

Granted, none of these were very high-profile, and Google hasn't acquired any other web search engines either, but to say "Google has never had to buy a competitor" is naive.

They've also spent a lot of money acquiring competing companies that aren't related to their core business. YouTube competed with Google Video before they were acquired. DoubleClick competed with AdSense (and arguably, Google stole DoubleClick's model). Waze competed (and still competes) with Google Maps.

Acquisitions aren't a sign of weakness.

Re: Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook

#20

Post by BinaryIdiot »

mtrpcic wrote: post #11
IBM wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh that's what they've done. The article is about Instagram becoming like Facebook in the sense that this is a massive property on the scale of the core Facebook product. 700 million users vs Facebook's 2 billion.

Facebook has definitely not left it as the "same old Instagram". They've changed the home feed algorithm to basically the same as the Facebook home feed algorithm, and there's been a lot of content creators negatively impacted by it (I know this because of the industry my wife works in, which is having major issues now, where engagement has basically halved among anybody except the top maybe 5% of content creators).

So here's the thing: Facebook said they'd leave Instagram to be Instagram. But saying Facebook isn't holding that promise because things have changed isn't necessarily accurate.

The people in charge of Instagram may have used more and more of Facebook's tools, looked at better analytics, tweaked, used lessons learned from Facebook, etc.

While I agree it's unlikely that Facebook left them entirely alone I don't think it's necessarily fair to say they meddled just because things have changed. Nothing stays the same especially in the tech industry.

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