111–120 of 396 posts
I don't see any ways to address this. Once enough attention is captured it will be inevitably used by someone to sell something. Developers want to get their ROI before someone else does and I don't blame them.
Instagram has slowly been deprioritizing content creation and promoting content consumption. This was clearest to me when they recently moved the Post button up to the top, out of the way, to make room for more consumption buttons within thumb reach. For a good long time IG was the only place I could reliably see actual user-generated content. Moreover it was actual friend-generated content, and mostly they posted th…
No algorithmic mess.
“Leave it to another GenZ author.”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hell, im a pretty early adopter of instagram along with loads of friends and like 95% of content has become stories. Turns out Snapchat was what most of us wanted but without a purposefully obtuse interface
I liked Snapchat, but I don't like stories. To me, the beauty of Snapchat was that I could share a funny moment with a couple of friends who I thought would find the same thing amusing. I can't do that with stories. It's like being forced to tell a in-joke to all of my friends at the same time. I'd rather just not tell the joke at all.
At this point, Instagram decided it wants to be a TV and just show me what it wants me to see, not my carefully curated feed. I'm letting my account die.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We, as in the IT industry, need to come up with a culture or methodology of 'declaring a product complete' Blaming Product Managers chasing "impact" is a fashionable thing to think/say here, but I don't think thats entirely true for consumer apps, and especially not for social networks. If it were, you'd expect that the each successive generation of apps to be a return to form. However as we've seen with the migrat…
>That is because "best" is not just about being feature complete, it's about what is "cool", and "cool" will aways be a moving target. Exactly. Look at the fashion industry: pants are pants, shirts are shirts, and there hasn't been a major step forward since decades. Still, brands birth and die continuously, without the underlying product being any better or worse, or cheaper, than the one that comes to replace it. P…
They care that the whole experience delivers them what they value: fit, trendiness, status, consistency of the experience and the product, etc.
They care about innovation only when it reliability delivers an obvious gain on any of those stats, or when the market has moved to the point where keeping up with trendiness demands it.
So many brands are “premier” because they know all of this and just relentlessly deliver that familiar experience, maintaining their market position.
Software hasn’t quite, as an industry, figured out that sweet spot of innovation and consistency to be truly lasting. We’re too familiar with disruption - which is true, by and large, and sets us apart. Except once a category is defined enough not to need it. No one’s really disrupted email, despite many attempts, because it’s too ubiquitous and the consistency of experience demands are too great. It’ll happen eventually, but only as a long term evolution of overall trends and underpinning standards. Like the move away from breeches and onto pants.
Facebook aside you really see this across the board on almost any platform, that once the product reaches it's 1.0 stage, (where it is good, does what the users want it to do, and has realised its vision) it begins a process of gradual decay, as the focus of the product managers (now panicking to find some statistics to improve to show their bosses) shifts from "building functionality" to "increasing engagement/reten…
Feels like LinkedIn has gone down this road as well. It really doesn’t feel like a professional network any longer… too much attention seeking spam.
It’s terrible. Should be a network for professionals talking about careers, it’s half people discussing Facebook things (squid game was a popular topic a month ago…), and its another half of attention seekers. Tech Twitter and HNs are the only socials I read to find interesting content and read everyday, plus few selected subreddits on sports I care for as soccer or formula 1, but step out on some other subreddits an…
Instagram has slowly been deprioritizing content creation and promoting content consumption. This was clearest to me when they recently moved the Post button up to the top, out of the way, to make room for more consumption buttons within thumb reach. For a good long time IG was the only place I could reliably see actual user-generated content. Moreover it was actual friend-generated content, and mostly they posted th…
But separately, if professional brands really do take over IG over user-generated content between friends, the runner-up is Pinterest. A February 2021 study of social media usage shows that Instagram usage among US adults is 40% [0], with Pinterest at 31% usage. Beyond Pinterest, the runner-ups for (high-quality, artistic) creative content are platforms like Adobe's Behance or Dribbble, but the users for these are primarily creative professionals.
For user-generated content between friends (day-to-day stuff), Snapchat isn't a bad replacement (25% usage, according to the same survey). I would guess that most content remains user-generated (via photos that delete themselves sent to other friends). I would also guess it's less less harmful to mental health for certain groups, as it doesn't feature Likes or Comments.
To be totally honest, though, I wouldn't regret the loss of user-generated social media content. Exchanging messages, having video calls, and seeing people in-person feels a lot more enjoyable and helpful for strengthening relationships.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/social-media...