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

Instagram Is Facebook Now

embedded.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 396 posts

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#171

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

kbenson wrote: post #46
andrew_eit wrote: post #35

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…

> We, as in the IT industry, need to come up with a culture or methodology of 'declaring a product complete' whereby all product managers are gracefully allowed to move on and a product is put into a state of stasis We live in a time when large companies will divest themselves of profitable but not growing businesses because it gets in the way of the core mission, which for large public companies is only one thing. G…

Just FYI. The app that I’ve been working on is designed for a “comfortable stasis.” It may take some time to get there, but I have no interest in metrics-driven growth, or appropriation of people’s PII.

We are likely to introduce changes, over time; but these will all be completely focused on Serving our users’ needs more effectively.

Kind of refreshing. I’m working for a 501(c)(3), and we don’t need to show “growth”; just Serve our community.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#172

Post by malwarebytess »

presentation wrote: post #146
deergomoo wrote: post #92

I used to have a really nice, tailored experience on Instagram. All I saw was genuinely good photography and art that I was interested in. Since Reels launched, my feed and the search screen is basically just softcore porn. Not sure what I’ve done to get the algorithm all hot and heavy—perhaps just being an 18-35 male is enough—but it’s rather embarrassing to the point where I don’t always feel comfortable opening th…

Agreed, Google also added YouTube shorts and those are similarly overfit to whatever is the most “engaging” content for some broad demographic, so since I work out I just get nonstop videos of ripped 18-24 year old women doing squats to show off their butts - and I’m not into any of it but they’ve already decided that’s what I want to see, forever.

There was some stat I saw a while ago that Gen Z doesn't visit free porn sites, finding themselves sated by regular social media. I wondered why. Now I see!

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#173

Post by vlunkr »

andrew_eit wrote: post #35

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…

I agree this is a problem, but IMO it's pretty specific to social media, or other free online services. Typically a business can reach 1.0, then seek to expand their market, or release the next big version, get people to pay for a bigger plan etc etc. All the normal ways a company grows once it has "made it."

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#174

Post by Schroedingersat »

andrew_eit wrote: post #35

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…

I don't think there's a way back.

Software devs need to start thinking seriously about the world they're building. "Just doing my job" isn't an excuse. The only way to a sane future I can see is to quit and start using federated services for everything.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#175

Post by JKCalhoun »

andrew_eit wrote: post #35

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…

> I really hope we'll look back at this age with the same wisdom-fuelled disgust we have when we look back at the early industrial age.

Why wait? Like you it disgusts me now.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#176

Post by quadrangle »

daxfohl wrote: post #161
rgbrgb wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix seems good at not destroying their product... though inherently the vision is kind of a scaled distraction machine. I agree with the thrust of your comment and wonder how we might get there. Software companies did look more like you describe in the past, and a few like (some parts of) Apple and some game companies still do. Mostly these are companies that ship a chunk of finished software rather than a "servi…

Netflix isn't free.

Neither is Instagram. But you just mean that Netflix uses a paywall model whereas Instagram uses a pay-with-attention-to-ads.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#177

Post by emodendroket »

Every time a social networking site makes any change at all we hear all this Chicken Little stuff about how they're running the product and users will abandon it, and almost every time everyone has forgotten in a month or two. A lot of times it is even obvious later that the change was for the better. My money is on this one being the same.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#178

Post by emodendroket »

andrew_eit wrote: post #35

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…

> If a product was not designed to show intelligent recommendations, use gamification or become a notification dashboard then that should be bared from ever appearing in its Backlog.

Why? I do not consider it self evident that such developments are necessarily bad.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#179

Post by adam_klein »

andrew_eit wrote: post #35

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…

Exactly that!

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#180

Post by JKCalhoun »

motoxpro wrote: post #125
andrew_eit wrote: post #35

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…

I'm glad we didn't declare the phone "done" at the Razor flip phone or that we didn't declare personal websites "done" with Yahoo Geocities. Progress has to happen. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you get it wrong, but you have to try.

Ha ha, Luddite here, I wish we had declared the phone done back with flip phones. And personal websites were better before Geocities (you know, when they were hand-rolled).

But I get what you're saying. I just wonder though why so many people tolerate crap — simply because it's all there is right now.

Cable TV with all its commercials was crap, so I nixed it over 20 years ago. I didn't tolerate it until something better came along, I just did without it.

Post reply on HN