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Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

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Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#271
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 follo…

I think out of all of them, Twitter is the most complicated. Their comment threads itself are super complex. Plus the character limit forcing people to post in multiple threads makes it worse.

UI wise, Snapchat is the worst.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#272
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah it really feels like IBM in the sense that it had some really amazing engineers that built the company up, and after they left, they have just been resting on those laurels ever sense. What have they truly innovated recently?

Is it "really amazing engineers" or good management / culture that matters? You can get a "really amazing engineers" and put them in an environment where they can't exploit their talents.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#273
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.

I think people might find it interesting on how Twitter was formed:

> Scandal and Betrayal: The Story of How Twitter Started

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8N0xN0ihMA

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#276

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 know how it's supposed to be read (and I've even seen real reels at old movie theaters!), but I still just think about fishing reels every time I see it.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#277
post #60

Facebook launched Lasso as its own app two years ago. I’m not sure if there were any differences between it and TikTok, but either way, it failed miserably. https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/01/lasso-facebook-tiktok-shut...

FB also has a Stories feature as Instagram, in turn from Snapchat, but I barely see anyone use it while everyone and their cat (literally) use Instagram Stories. Also, FB took a more advanced friend list concept from Google+ but few use or know how it works. (Like how “Acquintances” are your friends but they are pushed down by the algorithm) It is apparent that it’s hard to just shoehorn different usage patterns due…

For me, I know majority of my younger friends use IG stories and have abandoned snapchat.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#278

Facebook launched Lasso as its own app two years ago. I’m not sure if there were any differences between it and TikTok, but either way, it failed miserably. https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/01/lasso-facebook-tiktok-shut...

slightly unrelated but does anyone else find TechCrunch navigation to be absolutely unbearable? Also hijacking the back button on my browser.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#279

I have a hunch that TikTok fakes the amount of likes that users post. I’ve heard people say their first post goes viral. It’s an interesting strategy. Young person posts a TikTok, “get famous”, keeps posting.

I don't think it's faking. That behaviour sounds broadly inline with https://www.veed.io/grow/reverse-engineering-how-tiktok-algo...

Related:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24049676

https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/8/3/tiktok-and-the-sorti...

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