Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 145 posts

Re: Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook

#21

Post by olewhalehunter »

l33tbro wrote: post #15

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…

When you are interviewing the entity that can throttle visits to your articles, it's a bit more complicated than that. Coincidentally, many of the "fake news" links they knocked down were sites that also criticized Facebook.

Re: Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook

#22

Post by coralreef »

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.

Hmm, not sure if "extracts profit margins" is the right terminology. In mobile games, you could have a lifetime value of a user that is higher than their acquisition cost. This generates a model where you can spend money to make money.

In this instance, advertising is fuelling user acquisition which fuels profit.

Re: Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook

#23

Post by RandomInteger4 »

l33tbro wrote: post #15

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 social value they're creating is that people like me are able to have a common medium through which I can maintain at least some semblance of socialization with a multitude of people who don't all share common interest other than being people I've communicated with at some point.

Re: Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook

#24

Post by RandomInteger4 »

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).

I see all the posts of anyone I follow in the temporal order in which they post. Do you even selfie bro?

Re: Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook

#25

Post by abalone »

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.

Not at all. The article focuses on how Instagram has continually evolved itself despite the tendency of loyal users to decry change, specifically mentioning the ranked newsfeed and Snapchat-style stories.

Having said that, I don't think it's "Facebook" doing this. This has probably been Instagram's approach to product from day one.

Re: Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook

#26

Post by wand3r »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #20
mtrpcic wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree with this. I a sure there were changes for the better and worse do to the acquisition; but Systrom said that Instagram retained a lot of autonomy. I am not a user of FB or IG but certainly over several years the platform would change; all good tech products evolve.

Contrasting this with Oculus; I think IG was given a lot less hands on MGMT.

Re: Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook

#27

Post by asquabventured »

RandomInteger4 wrote: post #23
l33tbro wrote: post #15

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 social value they're creating is that people like me are able to have a common medium through which I can maintain at least some semblance of socialization with a multitude of people who don't all share common interest other than being people I've communicated with at some point.

I guess Email or text messages are no longer cool?

Re: Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook

#28

Post by olewhalehunter »

asquabventured wrote: post #27
RandomInteger4 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The social value they're creating is that people like me are able to have a common medium through which I can maintain at least some semblance of socialization with a multitude of people who don't all share common interest other than being people I've communicated with at some point.

I guess Email or text messages are no longer cool?

No but giving away massive amounts of monetizable information capital to private corporations for free sure is.

Re: Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook

#29

Post by wand3r »

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.

What about Waze, YouTube and double-click? Google core is search but their rev model is adtech; double click fits your definition.

YouTube competed hard in video; think about search w/o the "video" tab. Waze improved maps.

> I'm looking for the next Google

I mean, who isn't? The "next Google" can look a lot different than Google depending on what you mean by that

Re: Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook

#30

Post by nvalleysilico »

bgwhn wrote: post #17
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 competit…

Those were never direct competitors and never a threat to Google. Unlike easy-to-duplicate and fleeting social networking companies. Keep trying and keep in mind the DNA of Google in terms of being founded based on algorithmic technology as opposed to cut, copying and pasting text entry boxes for vicariously spying on girls (while also calling users "dumb f*cks" is much different than a core algorithmic search engine. This is evident by Google's revenue and breadth in hardware (TPUs etc) and true AI. Add the fact that Google controls more popular properties and products in terms of user adoption and revenue.
Post reply on HN