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Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

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Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#171

Post by reggieband »

Firebrand wrote: post #89

Reels’ inclusion in Instagram makes the UI confusing for me. Right now it only feeds me three or four videos that are peppered in my discover feed when I scroll down so I have to swipe up to refresh for more videos: https://imgur.com/a/jDtYbVP Why not have a separate section dedicated to Reels content instead of having it interspersed with photos and regular video posts?

I took me doing a Google search to find the original Instagram PR release that had instructions on where even to find Reels. But once you are in any Reel it acts just like TikTok, you swipe up for a never-ending feed of content.

So in a sense, any Reel is a portal into "a separate section dedicated to Reels content".

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#172

Post by Touche »

These types of articles are so frustrating and show why media is failing so badly.

This is an article about a product launch that:

* Barely talks about the product at all.

* No demos of what the product does.

* Not even a single picture of what the product looks like.

* Does not link to the actual product's page.

* Very few links at all, and mostly to their own pages.

* Is 50% about the competitor's legal/political issues.

* IS 50% about the parent company's strategy in launching the product.

I don't understand why there can't be 2 articles here:

* Information about the product launch.

* An opinion article about Facebook strategy vs. Microsoft TikTok Trump.

I'm pretty sure everyone just skims these articles because they are so uninformative. Can I be the only person who feels this way?

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#174

Post by xmprt »

galuggus wrote: post #83
tanilama wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TikTok however is the opposite of WeChat where the interface is dead simple and intuitive. What is Reels immitating here?

The Chinese version of TikTok douyin is also a hybrid of games, shopping, live streams a messenger and instant apps. The ui is far less important than having a captive user base

Doesn't douyin also have a very different demographic than TikTok though? I think their audience is much older in China.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#175

Post by sjg007 »

alehul wrote: post #68
OzzyB wrote: post #9

Quoting from the excellent blog post[1] submitted here yesterday[0] that stole my morning workout time: " Instagram is some strange hybrid mix of social and interest graph, and now it’s also a jumble of formats, with a Stories feed relegated to a top bar in the app while the more stagnant and less active original feed continues to run vertically as the default. Messaging is pushed to a separate pane and also served b…

As an American who looks at WeChat and sees a massive, unintuitive jumbled mess, you've explained in this comment how that could possibly be so popular in China! I feel foolish for not having realized that the UX must make perfect sense to everyone who has used WeChat since the days of it being a simple communication app. By that logic, I'm not sure we could say quite yet that Instagram's bundling is a mistake.

I can’t use snap chat but apparently it’s very popular!

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#176

Post by PKop »

me_me_me wrote: post #48
dleslie wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What lesson would that be? Facebook is hugely successful.

Well yes, but it has limited growth potential. Latest generations are not interested joining it. So in 10 years it will be a dying platform. Kodak didn't die when invented digital cameras, but it was a downhill ride towards inevitable cliff.

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#177

Post by abc-xyz »

jimbob45 wrote: post #146
snowwrestler wrote: post #38

I still cannot believe that Twitter bought Vine, couldn't figure out what to do with it, shut it down, then had to bring it back as a read-only archive because there was so much popular outcry. At the time, the story was that all these other platforms like Instagram and Snapchat were adopting short videos, so Vine could not compete anymore. But obviously it was possible to compete, since an entirely new service --Tik…

Everyone calls me stupid every time I bring up the fact that Twitter had a better TikTok before TikTok in Vine. The blinding fact is that Twitter has never once made a shrewd business movie in ~15 years and is piloted by nimrods. Even now, they could bring Vine back and compete with TikTok toe-to-toe but they’re evidently allergic to making sound business decisions.

TikTok is as far as I know not profitable. There’s a limit how much investor money you can burn on an app that isn’t making money. But I would say it’s safe to assume the CCP will gladly burn billions to ensure they have a social media platform that’s used worldwide.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#178

Post by ttamslam »

daenz wrote: post #164
rsynnott wrote: post #156

How to appeal to Gen Z; name the thing after a form of video playback that was totally obsolete before any of them were born.

People seem to underestimate how important a name can be. "Instagram Reels", "Reels", "IG Reels"... they have no buzz, they're clunky to say, and like you said, it already implies ancient uncool tech. The marketing people must have been phoning it in when they named this.

I obviously don't speak a generation but I'm in the target demo and I like the name. "Did you see X's reel the other day?" to me feels better than "Did you see X's tiktok the other day?"

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#179

Post by dmitriid »

0xffff2 wrote: post #165
dmitriid wrote: post #7

> The new product will be embedded within Instagram Oh god. It means that, like Instagram TV or whatever it was called, it will be forcibly shoved down your throat for the next half a year with nagging reminders for another year.

I check Instagram most days and I had never heard of Instagram TV before this post. They can't possibly have been shoving it down everyone's throats that aggressively.

You didn't use Instagram when they rolled out IGTV then. There were multiple inline promotions, aggressive hints for the dedicated IGTV button, then they made this dedicated button red (in an otherwise gray-and-white interface) for several months.

It still failed, of course, and got relegated to a small button inside the explore tab, but it the push was aggressive nonetheless. Expect the same for "Facebook's TikTok".

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#180

Post by baby »

ffggvv wrote: post #157
baby wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what they said about Snapchat

78% of internet users aged 18-24 use Snapchat Roughly eight-in-ten Snapchat users ages 18 to 29 (77%) say they use the app every day, including 68% who say they do so multiple times day. https://www.omnicoreagency.com/snapchat-statistics/

Your source says 50%. Still higher than I thought. I’m wondering what are the numbers for insta
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