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

301–310 of 396 posts

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#301

Post by shmel »

theshrike79 wrote: post #292
k_bx wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine is of course no major market for Facebook, but it's a good example that doesn't match what you describe at all. In Ukraine, Facebook is the place where you follow top journalists, anti-corruption people, activists, and other public figures. It's basically an extremely valuable addition to the media, where anyone can be lifted in popularity in a matter of hours if their content is truly important. Facebook has…

The rest of the world seems to use Twitter for this. Despite all its faults it seems to be better for this kind of stuff. Facebook's algorithms limit the way posts can be found way too much.

Twitter literally limits the length of your tweets. What can you say in a couple of phrases in the context of activism and politics? Just link another platform? Don't get me started on twitter threads, this is abomination. My patience usually runs out after the third tweet in a thread.

Another day Twitter CEO resigned and he posted a screenshot of his mail. Why couldn't he post it in a proper text format so people can reflow text and read it on different screens? Because Twitter sucks.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#302

Post by jakub_g »

theshrike79 wrote: post #292
k_bx wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine is of course no major market for Facebook, but it's a good example that doesn't match what you describe at all. In Ukraine, Facebook is the place where you follow top journalists, anti-corruption people, activists, and other public figures. It's basically an extremely valuable addition to the media, where anyone can be lifted in popularity in a matter of hours if their content is truly important. Facebook has…

The rest of the world seems to use Twitter for this. Despite all its faults it seems to be better for this kind of stuff. Facebook's algorithms limit the way posts can be found way too much.

I prefer Twitter personally, but in Poland it's also FB where everyone is, + Messenger and FB groups.

Twitter is only really used by journalists and politicians in Poland.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#303

Post by konart »

shmel wrote: post #301
theshrike79 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rest of the world seems to use Twitter for this. Despite all its faults it seems to be better for this kind of stuff. Facebook's algorithms limit the way posts can be found way too much.

Twitter literally limits the length of your tweets. What can you say in a couple of phrases in the context of activism and politics? Just link another platform? Don't get me started on twitter threads, this is abomination. My patience usually runs out after the third tweet in a thread. Another day Twitter CEO resigned and he posted a screenshot of his mail. Why couldn't he post it in a proper text format so people ca…

>My patience

Well, that's you. People are different. For some people it is easier to read a thread than a blog post that might be poorly formatted too.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#304

Post by jakub_g »

dzonga wrote: post #266
Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I agree with this 100%. If this were true, an investor like Warren Buffett, who has always invested by focusing on the fundamentals of the company he is investing in and focusing on real performance/value metrics, would not be able to be as consistently successful as he has been. It's hard to say though, because the market in which he made his initial chunk of capital is not the same market today, and it…

laws of nature always win at the end of the day. fundamentals are important, so long can a software saas company make money by selling software to other vc funded saas companies. at one point the free money being thrown around then spent on saas, cloud and marketing with fb / google will be pulled back. and then we will see who's naked. it might not be today, it might not be tomorrow, but it will happen. hence buying…

IMO fundamentals win long term, but I also think that company being hyped is often a self-fulfilling prophecy: they suddenly get crazy amounts of capital for free when they stock is high which they can use to for securing loans, transactions, salaries etc. to grow bigger and faster.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#305

Post by BoardsOfCanada »

stevofolife wrote: post #257
OtomotO wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing that doesn't stop growing, is cancer. The focus on growth is disgusting and cancer for the real world, the environment as well as society

[flagged]

Removing capitalism doesn't have a great track record. Maybe the problem is more fundamental than capitalism.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#306

Post by pawelk »

jakub_g wrote: post #302
theshrike79 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rest of the world seems to use Twitter for this. Despite all its faults it seems to be better for this kind of stuff. Facebook's algorithms limit the way posts can be found way too much.

I prefer Twitter personally, but in Poland it's also FB where everyone is, + Messenger and FB groups. Twitter is only really used by journalists and politicians in Poland.

Agreed. From my observations of Polish Twitter and FB, tweet screenshots shared on Facebook generate more engagement than the original tweets.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#307

Post by mrweasel »

jakub_g wrote: post #299

All social media-ish platforms are increasingly awful. FB, Twitter, Reddit, IG - all aggressively trying to make you create account and log in, hiding/clobbering content if you're not. Less and less content from people I explicitly followed, and more from "we think you'll like this tweet from someone that is followed by Bob" (not even liked or retweeted by people I know!).

The changes to Instagrams algorithms are, just like those of Facebook, to optimize "engagement". Where I believe most platforms fail is how they measure their improvements.

For the first weeks, or months, people just sort of deal with the new algorithms, because Facebook, Instagram and so on is part of their rutine. Engangement goes up, because people stay longer, as they can find anything. Over time, engagement then decreases, as users are increasingly annoyed. They starts to use the platform less and less, because the content they originally came for is hidden away. At that point the platform has moved on and is no longer seeing users leaving as a result of some change made months ago.

I'd be extremely surprised if Facebook has the attention span to tracking changes to their platforms over longer periods of time. As a result they focus on sort term improvements, because that's what they reward internally, without considering what the cost will be next year.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#308

Post by ddalex »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #287
ddalex wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that Whatsapp is a very non-US-oriented app - its is very popular in EU and Asia/Africa/Latin America, but none of my US friends use it other than to reach us outside of the US. Since it's not US-focused, the US execs (and boards, investors) tend to dismiss it. This explains why Whatsapp was left, relatively, untouched by FB in terms of user experience, after the acquisition - it's not shiny by any mea…

That's not the point. Execs don't dismiss WhatsApp because it's not US-oriented enough and therefore not shiny. Large multinational companies don't have that strong of bias towards any market or they wouldn't be successful multinational in the first place. Also, who in their right mind would want to be in charge of a market leader with 2 billions users? WhatsApp is so unshiny that Will Cathcart was in Fortune 40 unde…

> a market leader with 2 billions users

2 billion of low-value users; FB users are accounted at $150 a head; out of 2 billion users it's account for, only ~100 million would part with a $1 / month to use the application - less that $12 a year per paying user. WhatsApp doesn't have any other monetisation strategy, there are no ads, and the markets they are in are extremely sensitive to fees for payments, for example.

> It's just doing so in India.

Everybody is doing so in India thanks to UPI. Google Pay, virtually unseen outside Tap and Pay in other markets, has 35% percent of the market in India - Whatsapp has a high 0.27% percent of the market in Sept 2021, up from 0.01% previously. https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/upi-top-3-retain-...

India payments competition is ruthless thanks to low barriers of entry.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#309

Post by mad182 »

dx034 wrote: post #283
nicce wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While many are still using WhatsApp, it has taken significant reputation impact and users are dropping. Potential is only for the limited user group. It can be only changed by changing owner in general.

From my experience (Europe), not that many users actually left it. Sure, many people constantly complain about privacy issues but only a few very tech-savy left for Signal. And even they cannot leave Whatsapp as it's the de-facto standard. I don't know a single person who has a mobile phone and isn't on Whatsapp at least once a month.

Same. I prefer Telegram, and a few of my closest friends also use it, so I use it the most, but even my contact list on WhatsApp is at least 5x longer.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#310

Post by yomly »

eloisius wrote: post #282
ddalex wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that Whatsapp is a very non-US-oriented app - its is very popular in EU and Asia/Africa/Latin America, but none of my US friends use it other than to reach us outside of the US. Since it's not US-focused, the US execs (and boards, investors) tend to dismiss it. This explains why Whatsapp was left, relatively, untouched by FB in terms of user experience, after the acquisition - it's not shiny by any mea…

Which countries in Asia still count it as the most popular messaging app? China is on WeeChat, Korea has KakaoTalk and LINE is everywhere else. It is pretty amazing that Meta had three messaging apps and none of them are close to something like LINE in terms of ubiquity or utility.

My understanding is that WhatsApp is pretty big in India and my experience is that WeChat is pretty ubiquitous within SE Asia. The Singapore govt uses WhatsApp now for much of its govt comms and a lot of small business uses WhatsApp. Also recently in the news, you can book an Uber via WhatsApp . I'd be curious how WhatsApp does in Japan and South Korea.

Also my hunch is that Aus and NZ use WhatsApp heavily too

Post reply on HN