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

Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 347 posts

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#221

Post by joelbluminator »

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.

todays 30 and 40 year olds are more important than todays 14 year olds, and many of the 30 year olds are still on Facebook. in 15 years todays 14 year old are just gonna be in the beginning phase of their career and earning potential. And also whose to say Facebook doesn't buy one competing platform after the other? Only legal action can stop it from being dominant for decades.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#223

Post by rsa25519 »

hyperbovine wrote: post #220
_2d30 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If your system of government is not robust to 280-character text messages ... perhaps the problem is not the messages.

I think this misses the point. The division isn't within the government; it's between individuals.

And I don't think the power of short messages is specific to the United States

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#224

Post by adelpozo »

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…

Couldn’t they just rebranded it? Like venmo:paypal?

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#225

Post by SirensOfTitan »

ethbro wrote: post #141
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the MySpace comparison tired: * MySpace, at its peak, had around 75 MM MAU. * Facebook's core properties (Insta, WhatsApp, Messenger/Big Blue) have around 2.6 billion MAU. Even if I just consider FB core + Messenger, Facebook is roughly 20x larger than MySpace. Facebook, as a core product, also is growing in non-US markets, even though it has saturated the US markets for years. MySpace and Facebook just aren't…

A more cogent comparison would include total available markets at the time. 75m MAU in 2008 is very different than 2.6b in 2020.

I wasn't trying to make an exhaustive comparison, but each individual contributes inertia to the market regardless of the total size of the market (see 1 below)

The MySpace argument often calls to the transient spirit of social media: one day it's hot, the other it's not. I recall Digg's death too after a controversial redesign. The issue with this argument is that:

1. Numbers not only increase inertia, but social products increase it too. If my friends aren't using a social platform neither am I, usually.

2. Facebook has such a rich culture of A/B testing that they'll never release controversial changes without a deeper understanding of the impact of those changes on engagement. They won't shoot themselves in the foot like Digg did with current leadership.

3. Facebook has a really successful history of acquisitions and its leadership is very aware of social media trends. It catches those trends early.

As a consequence of (1), I'd argue that Facebook has a tremendous moat in comparison to its peers: it has a large amount of users who are more likely to stay put. While Facebook also moves slowly as a consequence of (2) often enough, it can move really quickly on producing novel products.

Facebook certainly will face challenges in the future, but they're likely to be a lot different at this stage.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#226

Post by rsa25519 »

parliament32 wrote: post #152
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…

>there may be a human-oriented life cycle to these sorts of social apps. Once a social platform is around long enough, it becomes the thing that old people use Precisely, although I think it's 50/50 between "what old people use" and "where the corporations live". IG is being used less and less because it's turned into the Home Shopping Network, places like TikTok are popular because corporate interests haven't shown…

> IG is being used less and less because it's turned into the Home Shopping Network

I'm not so sure about this. 80% of my communication happens through Instagram DMs, and I haven't heard a single complaint about advertisements, or Instagram at all.

Rather, I see friends browsing content on TikTok (rather than on IG), then re-sharing it through DMs. They browse on TikTok because its For You Page curation makes finding interesting and entertaining content easier than on any other platform I've seen.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#227

Post by mbesto »

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.

My sense is that lots of divided people (mainly fringe) have basically been silenced for years. Twitter has made it possible for those people to have a voice and more problematic made it super easy for malicious actors to mimic those people's ideas to make the situation worse than it really is.

My (probably unpopular) opinion is that they simply shouldn't have a voice. Twitter is bad for society period.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#228

Post by fragmede »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #86
3pt14159 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but it is especially uncool and if it stays uncool it will be a future myspace. Instagram is still ok, but even there. It's sliding. But I think Zuck knows this and buys up enough up and comers to probably stay ahead on enough things.

I find the MySpace comparison tired: * MySpace, at its peak, had around 75 MM MAU. * Facebook's core properties (Insta, WhatsApp, Messenger/Big Blue) have around 2.6 billion MAU. Even if I just consider FB core + Messenger, Facebook is roughly 20x larger than MySpace. Facebook, as a core product, also is growing in non-US markets, even though it has saturated the US markets for years. MySpace and Facebook just aren't…

Err, didn't you just compare MySpace and Facebook by looking at their MAU?

The questions for continued relevance is if Facebook-the-company can continue to iterate Facebook-the-product, or if its codebase has grown too unwieldy, and the company's culture gone toxic, making it harder to add a feature to Facebook, compared to creating a new company, writing a bunch of code, buying content and acquiring users. Given the rise of Instagram(Acquired), Snapchat (IPOd), WhatsApp(Acquired), TikTok, it's not clear Facebook-the-company is able to innovate. It's not clear that they have to, either, given older Internet brands like Yahoo! are still around and making money.

The comparison I'd make is to email. There are reasons email will never die (along with reasons why email can't innovate), and I think some of those reasons also apply to Facebook by this point. There's just some percentage of people that won't ever move, so while, eg, IRC is no longer in its heyday, it's still alive and kicking.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#230

Post by basch »

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.

IMHO, this course of events also paints a likely outcome had Twitter acquired Instagram instead of Facebook.

Instagram became dominant because it had Facebook's engineering and infrastructure resources. Had they fallen into Twitter's hands, it would be little more than a camera app and a way to embed photos into tweets and or been shut down.

Post reply on HN