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

241–250 of 396 posts

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#241

Post by 0x008 »

datavirtue wrote: post #49
grepfru_it wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's television for the current generation. I've noticed my parents and inlaws cannot exist without having the television on. I mean they can, but pick a random day, show up at their house and the TV is on some show that they are remotely interested in but watching because they had nothing else to do. That's instagram/facebook/snapchat/etc.

I have always had stuff to do. This sounds like mental torture.

That this thread includes a couple of comments like this is really interesting.

It shows that HN is a very particular sample of the population.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#242

Post by 0x008 »

ravenstine wrote: post #55
marcodiego wrote: post #32

I don't understand Instagram language. My GF uses it. It is full of digital influencers, people who make money because they are digital influencers. Young people with sometimes funny but generally pointless and most often ridiculous dancing moves to an equally ridiculous repetitive song. People buying expensive things, doing idiot things talking about uninteresting details of the uninteresting lives of equally uninte…

It's basically a porn site. Perhaps there's no nudity, but it's as soul-sucking and a waste of time as erotic pornography. The behavior of the user, the emotional high, and the business model really aren't so different.

In the same sense as reality TV or video games are like porn, yes.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#243

Post by barrenko »

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…

Or, as per NNT, Big Companies just seem to want to die.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#244

Post by 123anonanonanon »

saghm wrote: post #217
kbenson wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. Growth. > Private companies can sometimes get away with it, as long as the people backing them don't start to see them as investment vehicles like any other public company. I'm probably just naive or missing somethi…

Beside dividends there are also buybacks.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#245

Post by shp0ngle »

rib3ye wrote: post #27
rtpg wrote: post #15

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

The fact that they succeeded in spite of a purposefully obtuse interface is a pretty clear validation for the concept.

Did they really succeed though?

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#246

Post by smugglerFlynn »

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 it is fair to say Instagram has shifted from building functionality to increasing engagement. I don’t think you can separate these things at all.

At any stage of a business (which product is part of) you focus only on those things that contribute to your business model. All the metrics you’ve listed: engagement, retention, MAU — all of these are parts of the startup’s unit economy. Every single new feature is mapped against one of these metrics, especially at early stages of the product/business, when there are not many features, and resources to develop new ones are scarce. These metrics actually _drive_ any new features. That’s product management 101.

Back to Instagram, they’ve rolled out huge chunk of functionality this year: Reels. It’s basically another app inside the old one. All done seamlessly. Imagine amount of design and decision-making work that had to went into this. Even for very mature product like Instagram “building functionality” phase never stops.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#247

Post by bryanrasmussen »

wayoutthere wrote: post #183
_jal wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is the root problem. If you want to break from mandatory upgrades (this includes "cloud" stuff, where you have even less control over software), you need vendors that aren't forced to invent reasons to build them by their operational structure. This is a "Master's tools will never dismantle the Master's house" situation. Not unrelatedly, I strongly support Debian and think everyone else should, too. Softwa…

That phrase has a very specific meaning rooted in racism; I would not advise using it to describe any other situation that you don’t want to bring that context into. If only to avoid misunderstandings.

I think that would be rooted in anti-racism, and anyway the next sentence after it "They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change." I think establishes the universality of the idea, the same idea expressed in phrases such as if voting could truly change the system it would be outlawed.

that idea being that systemic change cannot be achieved within the system that is to be changed.

on edit: I am not necessarily a believer in the idea, as I think the 'if voting' expression of the idea can be shown to be wrong by various historical examples.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#248

Post by mclightning »

This will be the end of Instagram and Facebook to an extent. People have already left FB, and some deleted it entirely. Next will be Instagram, if they do the same thing there.

Probably good for society. Let Facebook do their mistakes.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#249

Post by johnyzee »

spacelamb wrote: post #107
er4hn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be followed up by "WhatsApp" rebranding to "What's Facebook" and "Oculus" to "Facebook Live 360".

Even shorter for branding: "FaceApp" and "Facebook Rift"

No, just "Face" (it's cleaner). And then sue anyone else using the word.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#250

Post by sneak »

AlexandrB wrote: post #39

This is the kind of stuff that makes it hard to claim that Facebook is a "neutral" platform. When you start inserting content into my feed based on some engagement algorithm you become responsible for what content goes viral.

You can't promote some content without effectively censoring other content.
Post reply on HN