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Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat

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Re: Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat

#51
post #28

The whole point of Snapchat is that it's not about sitting down, taking a high quality photo, editing it, etc. It's a messaging app meant for quick replies. You send someone something and they reply back. That's fundamentally different from Instagram's model of user interaction. It's like comparing time spent in iMessage to time spent on YouTube: it doesn't make sense.

Posting on instagram won't take much longer than on snapchat, most of the time to arrange the picture will be spent in the camera app.

When it comes to viewing (which is where ad revenue is generated), both apps have similar customer behaviour.

Re: Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat

#52
post #28

The whole point of Snapchat is that it's not about sitting down, taking a high quality photo, editing it, etc. It's a messaging app meant for quick replies. You send someone something and they reply back. That's fundamentally different from Instagram's model of user interaction. It's like comparing time spent in iMessage to time spent on YouTube: it doesn't make sense.

You're looking at the wrong parts of Instagram. Instagram Stories and Direct Messaging (both of those = Snapchat minus discover) have really taken off. I think everyone I know has switched away from Snapchat. The main reason being that they were also already on Instagram and it now does what Snapchat does plus non-ephermeral photo sharing. Why be on both in that case?

Re: Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat

#53
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instagram: Stories are autoplay. You click once and it's a slideshow. So you can assume metric here are orders of magnitude higher than what it should be. If autoplay means people watch more stories, then so be it. I don't understand what you're trying to say or suggest here. Also fun fact: Snapchat used to have auto-play before they redesigned their app. > Instagram: Stories at the top of the app is a very bad use…

> If autoplay means people watch more stories, then so be it. I don't understand what you're trying to say or suggest here. If anything, Snapchat should implement autoplay for themselves and see what happens. It's at least worth a test. They did implement it and rolled it back. I think it has to do with use case. Instagram is very much like Facebook in that it is an addictive feed style. Snapchat is more selection. >…

> Advertisers love young people, and that's where they are.

Not necessarily. Advertisers love people who are young and have money. So 20-35 is much more valuable than 12-16. Not sure where the average age for Snapchat users is, but I can imagine that they have a higher share of users who are too young to generate revenue for advertisers.

Unrelated to that it's just because advertisers are slow to catch up. Generally, advertising is most profitable where the most money is. And that is with older people. Successful online marketing to 60+yrs is much more profitable than to 20-25yr olds.

Re: Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat

#54
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snapchat does have Discover, with "snap stories" from news sites and even stuff they curate themselves. https://support.snapchat.com/en-US/article/discover-how-to

> with "snap stories" from news sites and even stuff they curate themselves. That has to be even more depressing if Instagram users are still using the IG app more with the effort SNAP is putting into the content.

The problem is that Snapchat Discover is totally bollocks. I'm a mid-20's guy and 90% of the content I see in it is either about the Kardashians or stuff like '10 things you totally hate about your bra'. There is absolutely zero targeting of that content and unfortunately it's not even neutral 'everyone will like this' content. It's 90% for teenage girls.

Re: Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat

#55
post #50
post #49

An app with a decent UX surpasses a shitty one with dreadful UX - who would've thought?

Yeah - I think everyone here just ignores how dreadful the Snapchat app is on Android phones. It's so dreadful that even non-techy users which usually don't care about app quality jumped ship from Snapchat to Instagram. A lot of iPhone users followed because that's where the content is now.

Even on iPhone it's dreadful now. I miss the first few versions of Snapchat when it launched. An UI that at least kinda made sense, no stories nor "discover" garbage, and the list of everyone's top 3 "best friends" was cool.

Re: Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat

#56

Metrics exposed by instagram is a pure scam aka growth hacking by fb engineers as their comp is aligned towards that. Snapchat: Stories are not autoplay. You touch and see the story you're interested in and the view closes. You have to scroll and open another story. Instagram: Stories are autoplay. You click once and it's a slideshow. So you can assume metric here are orders of magnitude higher than what it should be…

>Snapchat: Stories are not autoplay. You touch and see the story you're interested in and the view closes. You have to scroll and open another story.

Not sure when the last time you used Snapchat was, but this is definitely not true anymore. Stories do autoplay and will continue on to the next person on your friends list.

Re: Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat

#58
post #7
post #5

What do people think about "minutes per day" as a metric for success? I think it represents a fundamental misalignment of goals between users and the company. By this metric, the more of your waking life that can be taken, the better.

I don't get it. It's not like users are forced to use these applications. If users like Instagram more than Snapchat, they're bound to use it longer (which the article seems to imply). Hence, the metric.

If Google intentionally slowed its search results by 10%, would people not spend more time on the site? Perhaps even to the tune of 10%? But would people suddenly love Google 10% more?

As a more explicit example, Facebook used to allow you to type a friend's name into the search bar on desktop, and a card would come down (with other possible people too you could select/down-arrow to) so when you hit enter you would go straight to that friend's page. Now, all search queries take you to a search page, where you can then click on your friend's name. That extra page load and click multiplied a few times a day probably keeps me on Facebook an extra minute or so every day, which I'm sure was used during the feature testing to justify its greatness. Instead, it noticeably and nearly daily negatively impacts my life.

Re: Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat

#59
post #5

What do people think about "minutes per day" as a metric for success? I think it represents a fundamental misalignment of goals between users and the company. By this metric, the more of your waking life that can be taken, the better.

insta and snapchat aren't productivity apps, they're essentially time wasters. so yeah, minutes per day is a decent metric for success. when Google Sheets starts bragging about their minutes per day metric then i'll start getting worried.

I'd argue that snapchat is much closer to a productivity app than instagram. Snapchat makes picture (and now regular) messaging faster and more fire&forget. Instagram is just other feed for the user to slog through.

Re: Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat

#60
post #57
post #49

An app with a decent UX surpasses a shitty one with dreadful UX - who would've thought?

Dreadful UX was Snapchat's selling point from the beginning, though. Kids love it because the olds can't figure it out.

To be honest their UI used to be nice when they launched, and that hasn't prevented kids for liking it. They made it worse later on for no benefit, and eventually got taken over by Instagram.
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