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Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

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Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#181
post #172

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 i…

This reads to me like it was written by Facebook PR (indirectly) via a press packet.

A lot of "news" articles are just PR departments lobbying journalists. The journalist tweaks stuff slightly, then dumps it over the wall. This sort of thing is very cheap to produce. And, to be fair, it isn't actually new. The more useful/novel/investigative content has slowly declined, so this is all that's left.

There just isn't any money in writing news. Newspapers were never paid for news content, but rather delivering ads to everyone's doorstep daily. E.g. subscription revenue was much less than ad revenue, to the point that it was never clear to me why subscription prices were non-zero (though they were usually separate departments with their own P&L, so it's probably just historical).

There are better ways to find classifieds, job listings, and brand advertising these days... So now we have this junk. If one could find a way of financially or otherwise incentivizing real journalism, you'd be a folk hero.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#182

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.

The people who launched Reels are probably in their 30s and 40s and working against serious organizational biases that prevent them from innovating. So not surprised that they named this Reels.

I'm in my mid-30s, I still think Reels sounds... very old-fashioned.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#183
post #51

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…

My take on it is Twitter just isn't, as a company, very good at making software. This is from external observation and a couple of reports from friends who used to work there.

As an avid user of the product, I agree.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#184

For a moment, I read the word "reels" in the headline as a verb (meaning: "lose one's balance and stagger"), instead of a noun (film reel). But my mind quickly readjusted: "that doesn't make sense, because FB owns Instagram."

I read it the same way initially, thinking a different FB team made the tiktok competitor and the Instagram team didn't know about it and was taken aback.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#185
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…

>And soon, perhaps commerce will be jammed in somehow? It already is... About a week or two ago Instagram decided to put the "Shop" or "Marketplace" button where the "Likes" tab button was... And now to get to your likes/follows/etc. you need to go to your profile tab, and find the "heart" button in the top right. But because the "like" button has been in the same place for the past several years, it's still ingraine…

In my experience, often people just double tap the photos to like them on instagram. And since most people hardly used the button for liking, it was a prime real estate for shops to move into.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#187
post #172

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 i…

This reads to me like it was written by Facebook PR (indirectly) via a press packet. A lot of "news" articles are just PR departments lobbying journalists. The journalist tweaks stuff slightly, then dumps it over the wall. This sort of thing is very cheap to produce. And, to be fair, it isn't actually new. The more useful/novel/investigative content has slowly declined, so this is all that's left. There just isn't an…

I'm not expecting investigative journalism here. I just expect the article about a product launch to be mostly about the product being launched. Like pull out your phone install the app and take a screenshot or two. List what it does and how it works.

Save the corporate strategery and political intrigue stuff for another article.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And soon, perhaps commerce will be jammed in somehow? It already is... About a week or two ago Instagram decided to put the "Shop" or "Marketplace" button where the "Likes" tab button was... And now to get to your likes/follows/etc. you need to go to your profile tab, and find the "heart" button in the top right. But because the "like" button has been in the same place for the past several years, it's still ingraine…

In my experience, often people just double tap the photos to like them on instagram. And since most people hardly used the button for liking, it was a prime real estate for shops to move into.

I think you're confused.

The "Likes" button on the tab bar wasn't to like a post. It was to basically see the list of all interactions on your posts or new followers/requests.

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