Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#191

Post by dmix » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 7:00 PM UTC

echevil wrote: post #94

alehul wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

WeChat has lots of things hidden behind low impression entrypoints. You can explore them when you want. Its primary features, chat and moments, are dead simple, like WhatsApp. Facebook on the other hand, are mixing lots of stuff into their main feed, making the experience horrible for everyone

Marketing/business side always demand prime real-estate to push 'features' instead of just blending them into the UI. This is extra-apparent on mobile apps but FB did it on their website for years (I haven't seen what it looks like recently).

It's not easy to say no as a designer but the best companies are the ones most capable of keeping things as focused on primary UX flows as possible.

TikTok figured this out by making it all about scrolling a simple page of high-density videos, the entire screen is full of the content you want. No extra tapping or side scrolling needed.

Reddit is another company that missed the boat on what made their website great during their redesign. Making it feel top-heavy JS-wise and sparser instead of simple high-density information like newspaper site with simple links. For ex: the first article on old.reddit.com is 100px from the top and can fit 10 articles within 1000px, while the new one starts at 400px and lists 3-4 posts by 1000px (HN is 55px and 20+ posts).

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#192

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 7:02 PM UTC

baby wrote: post #180

ffggvv wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[deleted]

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#193

Post by rjkennedy98 » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

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.

Can't tell if the OP is being sarcastic. Just want to point out that "Tik Tok" is the sound an analog clock makes - which is also obsolete technology - except for the odd grandfather clock.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#194

Post by bzb3 » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

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…

You cannot believe that Twitter did something terribly stupid?

“Twitter is such as mess — it’s as if they drove a clown car into a gold mine and fell in.” - Mark Zuckerberg

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#195

Post by cboornaz17 » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 7:13 PM UTC

Jumped on my Instagram explore page to see what Reels actually looks like since the article doesn’t show any screenshots..

Of the first three posts I saw, two of them were cross posted from TikTok. Not that it’s new to see social media content posted to another app, but is there anything to be said for the fact that Facebook can now monetize TikToks in another fashion?

Seems like even if they don’t win in terms of creators moving platforms, it would still be in a creator’s best interest to post a successful TikTok again as a Reel.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#196

Post by newen » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 7:16 PM UTC

beenBoutIT wrote: post #122

Miner49er wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there already is a competitor - TikTok. As it stands, if I only care about the TikTok/Reels functionality, I'm going with TikTok. It doesn't come with all the extra bloat. I guess we'll see what happens with the potential Trump ban and Microsoft acquisition though.

If Microsoft acquires TikTok how would they go about vetting all of the code to remove any potentially malicious components?

TikTok is "malicious" only because a Chinese company partially owns it. That's literally it and it's just like any other social media company otherwise.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#197

Post by rattray » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 7:19 PM UTC

nilkn wrote: post #143

Reels isn’t going to compete with TikTok in any real way for a few simple reasons. First and foremost, as a non-Instagram user, I flat-out can’t use it. A while back, when I was curious about TikTok, I downloaded it and was instantly swiping through a video feed that was already getting customized for me. I downloaded Instagram this morning and was presented with a wall to create an account. Nope. Second, TikTok is n…

> Young people want to use the newest social app that old people haven’t yet infiltrated.

There are actually plenty of people over 30 on TikTok FWIW.

I definitely agree that TikTok's no-login-wall NUX was wonderful. You can even watch on a laptop without logging in.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#198

Post by jimbob45 » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 7:25 PM UTC

abc-xyz wrote: post #177

jimbob45 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

American VCs have lived and died on the “customer count first, profitability later” mantra for the better part of a decade.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#199

Post by TheAdamAndChe » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 7:25 PM UTC

dimitrios1 wrote: post #149

_2d30 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The division they have helped foment in the US is pretty impressive.

People have been this divided for a long time. Social Media just helps exhume it better. Started in the 50s.

Idk, the particular flavor of outrage varies greatly depending on the platform. 4chan, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, all of the them are drastically different platforms with cultures that emergently form from early design decisions like anonymity, One-to-many vs many-to-many communication paradigms, thread layouts, and moderation decisions.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#200

Post by spanhandler » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 7:27 PM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #175

alehul wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I'm not sure if I'm just turning into an old man prematurely or what, but "social" sites and apps usually turn too confusing for me to use around their second or third iteration.

Facebook c. 2010 was too confusing for me, so I bounced off (from descriptions of what it was like a couple years before that, I think I'd have enjoyed it then).

Twitter's been too confusing for me to understand for years, I can barely follow what's going on when reading it, let alone use it (I've tried within the last couple years, and never got the hang of it). Used to be easy for me to read & use but the interface and interaction options don't make sense to me anymore.

I didn't even figure out that Instagram was supposed to primarily be a social site/service, despite repeatedly being exposed to it, until some time after the Facebook acquisition.