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

Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 394 posts

Re: Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

#331

Post by quadrangle »

soared wrote: post #290
DogOnTheWeb wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In brief: 1. Products reliant on advertising for revenue are incentivized to increase the amount of ads shown (per user and in total). This leads to product strategy which prioritizes growth and engagement above all. The line between "highly engaging" and "addictive" products becomes very thin, arguably disappearing entirely. 2. In order to provide highly targeted ads, companies must necessarily collect, store and or…

1. All products are reliant on advertising. full stop. But even then, they are not incentivized to increase the total amount of ads per user, that would be inefficient. They'd prefer better targeted ads over more ads (point 2). 2. Source? Outside of a few edge cases (china) I don't think this is a real concern. The same can happen with financial (or any) data, but I don't see people saying the data is the problem. Ra…

The discussion is not about making the term "advertising" so broad as to be useless. It's not "advertising" as in "any way that people notice a product or service". We're discussing "advertising" as in specific messages that third parties pay to have shown to people whose attention has been gotten by a second party.

In other words, the topic is the advertising where you give your attention to one party and that party participates (gets paid) to show you something else different from what you went there to see.

So, concretely: this is about paid ads on Facebook. This is NOT about products listed on Amazon that show up with compelling descriptions when you search for that type of product and clink on a link that wasn't higher in the list because someone paid for that.

When you go to Amazon and search, you are specifically choosing to put your attention toward products of a certain sort and asking for information. Amazon is delivering that information. There's marketing in how the products present themselves, but it's still something you are actively looking for, given to you second-party by the company from whom you are considering buying the thing.

When you go to Facebook to see how your friends are doing and your attention there gets sold to advertisers to show you unrelated products that may happen to fit your interests, that is the topic of discussion here.

Re: Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

#332

Post by quadrangle »

soared wrote: post #252
quadrangle wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're feeding the adtech privacy-invading world which has tons of negatives for society. As an analogy: "I shop at Walmart and find products I actually appreciate. What's wrong with that?" The answer isn't simple, and shaming individual consumers isn't a solution anyway. Among the biggest problems with ads are that when they are the primary economic model for these services, they will tweak everything to favor paid…

> tons of negatives for society Can you expand on this? I also can't really parse what your second paragraph is trying to say. How do businesses that rely on ads undermine organic product discovery, and what conflict of interests could they have?

Thanks for the open question. What I'm saying has at least these two elements (not counting tons of negative side-effects or the psychological harm that manipulative advertising causes):

1. Given capital being so unequally distributed, paid ads amount to amplification of the messages from those who happen to have money. In another framing: you see ads about mediocre products with a big marketing budget; you don't see ads about wonderful products that have little marketing budget.

2. The conflict of interest is where Facebook has an incentive not to highlight too much the non-paid posts from people that mention products that don't pay for advertising. If you were to consistently see non-paid posts that gave you all the info you need to get products and services you appreciate, then the advertisers wouldn't be seeing their ads pay off and might cut back on paying Facebook for ads.

Overall, attention is somewhat zero-sum. Your attention to one thing is not attention to something else. You never really know what you're missing. But in an ad-driven system, attention is biased toward (but not exclusively) whatever serves those things connected with ad money.

Re: Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

#333

Post by dpark »

glenneroo wrote: post #130
394549 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also feel bad for us, as users, because social media (at least the friend-focused kind) is dominated by one dude's vision.

Facebook went public so they have a board of directors now, therefore I would assume Mark has to find ways to keep them happy as well. I would guess the general vision of Facebook is like most corporations, to make more money.

Zuckerberg has majority voting rights. He doesn’t have to keep the board happy.

Re: Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

#334

Post by ccc111 »

Alex3917 wrote: post #72
admn2 wrote: post #48

I've long had a theory (maybe it's not that revolutionary) that part of Instagram's success is it allowed people a free pass to be vain and show off-y. On Facebook, it was a bit stigmatized to post a picture of an expensive purchase, amazing house interior, fancy vacation, or workout picture of your physique. However, it's the entire point of Instagram. Couple that in with all the brands and other accounts of inspira…

http://charlescosta.net/2014/04/how-the-seven-deadly-sins-dr... tl;dr — Every successful social startup should bend, but not completely violate, one or more social taboos, e.g. one of the 7 deadly sins. Edit: When designing www.fwdeveryone.com, we purposely incorporated Pav's theory by building the platform around the taboo of getting involved in other people's relationships, in this case by letting people read (and…

nice plug goofball

Re: Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

#335

Post by austenallred »

thanatropism wrote: post #188
csomar wrote: post #60

I remember the outrage when Zuckerberg bought Insta for $1bn. The Internet was filled with bubble-theorist. Say what you want about Zuckerberg but the guy was well ahead of his time and could see how things would evolve and what tick with people brains.

To be fair, the whole thing could still prove to be the mother of all bubbles. For one: we still don't really really understand network effects. There's huge value to being Facebook (you're forced to be there because all your friends are there and most nowhere else), but people also switch platforms for reasons that are not excellently understood. And when I say bubble I don't mean this or that company -- Silly Valle…

I mean I spend $100,000/month advertising on Facebook and Instagram, so it depends on what your definition of “bubble” is

Re: Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

#336

Post by austenallred »

misiti3780 wrote: post #285
csomar wrote: post #60

I remember the outrage when Zuckerberg bought Insta for $1bn. The Internet was filled with bubble-theorist. Say what you want about Zuckerberg but the guy was well ahead of his time and could see how things would evolve and what tick with people brains.

or he just got very lucky. it only seems like he was "ahead of his time" because the story worked out - when you look at other acquisitions like say Oculus or Parse, I would argue it seems quite the opposite.

If you spend $4 billion on acquisitions and one of those becomes worth $100 billion that is a win no matter how you slice it.

Re: Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

#337

Post by ryandrake »

protonimitate wrote: post #192
jmartrican wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be honest, I like ads that are relevant to the things I am interested in. I am no FB fan boy, but their ads are pretty good... I actually click on them. What's wrong with that?

Nothing. It's a win-win. Consumers get personalized, tailored ads. Businesses reach audiences that actually want their products. What annoys me are ads for products I've already purchased (amazon is terrible about this), or the same ad plastered 20 times across multiple sites. Instagram handles ads pretty well IMO. They are non-intrusive, easy to digest, and highly relevant. Facebook OTOH, has become one giant scroll…

It is not a win for people who prefer not to be a “target”. I’d rather have irrelevant ads than targeted ads because one requires the harvesting of data about me and the other does not.

Re: Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

#338

Post by ryandrake »

ralston wrote: post #277
pc86 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're going to get ads. To try to fight against the very existence of advertising is quixotic to the point of being sad. Why would you not want them to be relevant to you? As a consumer, I would much prefer ads that are carefully tailed to my interests - software, fitness, general aviation - than see wildly different ads on the same platform, or the same 2-3 high paying ads for the latest garbage CBS sitcom. As a bu…

> "You're going to get ads. To try to fight against the very existence of advertising is quixotic to the point of being sad." This idea is complete bologna in my opinion. People aren't trying to fight the existence of ads (e.g., movie trailers, magazines, sports ads on ESPN, maybe even the off native ad) -- people are fighting the invasive, predatory, and downright deceitful nature of the current online advertising m…

> Don't we all want this?

Not me. I’d rather no ads, but if I can’t block them I’d prefer irrelevant ads to targeted ads. They waste my attention equally, but one does not require the collection of my personal data.

Re: Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

#339

Post by ghaff »

jedberg wrote: post #298
ghaff wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One important difference is that, at least historically, radio play could actually stimulate the purchase of music so that you could listen to it at a time of your choosing (and without ads). Whereas, streaming on-demand music is increasingly a substitute for owning the tracks for a lot of people.

Again, this is something that is more fair to the consumer at the expense of the artist. The only reason you owned an album was because you couldn't listen when you wanted to, and were forced to buy it. Now it's better for the consumer, but not the artist.

Personally, I'm not totally sold on streaming music being better for the consumer although I do have a subscription. I like to own any music I really care about.

That said, it's an easy statement for me to make given that I was buying music on vinyl, then CD, then digital downloads before there was much in the way of streaming. So, even leaving aside the vinyl, I had a large collection of owned music before modern streaming hit in a big way. I still buy things every now and then but I have a large core of older music I care about--which is the bulk of what I'm interested in.

Re: Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

#340

Post by ryandrake »

fullshark wrote: post #307
xkjkls wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do pictures depress you so much? Honestly, I think if that's the case, it says that you have some unresolved issues you probably should deal with. Part of what makes social media seem depressing is your attitude with it.

Social media is depressing because all your friends seem to have much more interesting and entertaining lives than you do.

The thing is I guarantee you the people without all this social media addiction generally have more interesting lives than the ones who do.
Post reply on HN