Another example of how technologically inferior platforms can be successful given the right exposure. (this is obviously inferior because the user cannot reflow the text, change font color, copy paste, highlight, etc.)
Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram
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Re: Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram
#32Wow, talking about putting the horse behind the carriage. So, people don't have the concentration to read a book anymore. But instead of fixing the cause of this, whatever it is, we mangle them through platforms that weren't designed for it and if there is some success, we claim that people are reading again. Of course they are not. It's a whole different experience. It can be nice and it can add to the experiences t…
I had some of the same snobbery about audiobooks (which one could level the same criticisms at, maybe even more so). But I have tried a few recently, and have to admit I got a lot out of the experience, maybe even more than reading it myself in the case of some of the better narrations.
I don't think your comparison to a movie adaption works at all. It is very much like reading the book - you consume the same text. The difference is maybe the 'distracting' animated illustrations, and the tendency to read in very small pieces, rather than settle down to reading chapters at a time. The last point speaks to your concentration comment, though not sure it's definitely a bad thing, certainly better than not reading at all.
Re: Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram
#33Try it yourself, it’s pretty cool like an instant ebook. Metamorphosis: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3ODUyMTE0ODA2MzA3... The Raven: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTYyMTk5MTcwMTYz... Alice In Wonderland: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTQ0MTEwMzE5MTg4... — I find the top comment quite cynical, it’s literally the same as reading text on an ebook or even paperback. IMO once you…
They have broken the internet by banning hyperlinks. So naturally everything starts happening inside the app. How would you do copy a quote, table of contents or term lookups? I can't even check out the links u posted cause it asks me to login.
Re: Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram
#34I'm intrigued, and yet horrified by the amount of bandwidth that all of these images must be consuming.
I know for some backbone comms technologies (SDH, maybe?) there has to be some sort of carrier signal at all times. I think this is probably true for fibre as well, it's never truly dark. So maybe the bandwidth being there should be used for something useful?
(I purposely ignore the processing power required at the other end to serve you the images ;-)
Re: Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram
#35Since a few comments mention the superiority of "real books", maybe those with that opinion see Instagram as downgrading the reading experience.
For some perspective, keep in mind that many famous novels were originally magazine or newspaper installments.[0]
Therefore, reading works like Dumas' "Count of Monte Cristo", Dostoevsky's "Crime & Punishment", or Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" -- in consolidated book form -- is the incorrect method of reading their words. And the correct way to read Charles Dickens is in partial installments to stop at the cliffhanger and then wait a month to resume the story.
Or maybe, the Instagram'ing of novels can be seen as harmless re-serializing of books.
An aside about what "reading" really is...
Some think that listening to the words of a book (e.g. Audible) instead of seeing the words with eyeballs is also not really reading. Does this also mean that blind people are never really "reading" unless their fingers are touching braille?
But the reverse can be true. We're consuming "The Iliad" incorrectly if reading it as a book since it was originally orally transmitted instead of written down.
For some, the physical medium defines what reading is. I don't agree with that but it's clear some really have rigid opinions about how the authors' words are supposed to enter our brains.
EDIT ADD: similar bite-sized reading behavior on smartphones in China explained by a16z Connie Chan. It's not too different from Charles Dickens serializations in the 19th century. Deeplink about China's mobile book economy at 6m25s: https://youtu.be/78pLIj4xeVs?t=6m25s
[0] https://booksonthewall.com/blog/serial-novel-a-brief-history...
Re: Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram
#36So if you miss a story, you miss a page. :))) This is actually... kinda useless.
For 300.000 people it is... kinda useful.
And the books are shared via the highlight function of Instagram. It's like stories, but they aren't deleted after 24h. They stay in your profile and can be watched again and again until you delete them.
Re: Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram
#37Try it yourself, it’s pretty cool like an instant ebook. Metamorphosis: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3ODUyMTE0ODA2MzA3... The Raven: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTYyMTk5MTcwMTYz... Alice In Wonderland: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTQ0MTEwMzE5MTg4... — I find the top comment quite cynical, it’s literally the same as reading text on an ebook or even paperback. IMO once you…
They have broken the internet by banning hyperlinks. So naturally everything starts happening inside the app. How would you do copy a quote, table of contents or term lookups? I can't even check out the links u posted cause it asks me to login.
While I agree that this is strictly worse than current document and eBook formats meant for computers, this inarguably not much worse than physical books. We couldn't have copied quotes or table of contents in a physical book.
Re: Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram
#38Really excited about these kind of steps taken towards multimedia literature and digitalization of it. For quite some time, school textbooks and literature has been brought to touch screen devices or otherwise digitalized on other devices as-is - pages with text as we have known it for long time. Modern tech could enable much more deeper and interactable content for both studies and leisure reading.
and yet in my experience most HNers and similar tech communities want all docs in plain text, tex, or very simple markdown suggest that Wikipedia would be better if it's physics articles had interactive simulations or that stack overflow's failed docs initiative should make room for working examples and get downvoted into oblivion
Part of the reason is because that decouples the content from the presentation format. Give me a .txt, .md, or even a .tex file, and I can load it in my editor next to the code I'm working on, and I can efficiently jump around, search, and copy from it, all via a keyboard. At any point I can easily print it out and have a stab at it with a highlighter. Give me the super modern web documentation, and now I have to pick up the mouse, I have to install a tiling WM just to stay sane, I only have the most basic search available (which is broken half of the time because of bleeding-edge webdev bullshit), and if I try to print it (God forbid!), every page is 50% header and sidebar.
Techies like plaintext because it's free of superfluous bullshit. It's efficient. It's flexible.
As for interactive simulations, I'm all for them. I love the work of Bret Victor, or Nicky Case, or other stuff in the category of "explorable explanations". Those people do it well. But if it's not executed well, it's worse than not being done at all.
Re: Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram
#39I'm intrigued, and yet horrified by the amount of bandwidth that all of these images must be consuming.
The CDN has already cached it for the company and the users are probably on wifi so why think about it Even if it was cellular...
Well, there's taste, and I agree with GP here - I too find such things distasteful. It's not much waste in the grand scheme of things, but it's still ridiculously wasteful, and the more wastefulness is accepted, the more it adds up everywhere.
Re: Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram
#40Since a few comments mention the superiority of "real books", maybe those with that opinion see Instagram as downgrading the reading experience. For some perspective, keep in mind that many famous novels were originally magazine or newspaper installments.[0] Therefore, reading works like Dumas' "Count of Monte Cristo", Dostoevsky's "Crime & Punishment", or Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" -- in consolidated book form -- is…
You will find a certain argument that you are "reading" all poetry wrong, if you are not reading it aloud.