Live data from Hacker News

Instagram Is Facebook Now

embedded.substack.com

391–396 of 396 posts

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asian messenger apps like LINE are really more of an “everything app.” I use LINE to chat with everyone. In Taiwan it’s a given that that anyone you meet will have LINE. Businesses have a special business line account that staff can use. You can book your hotel, vet apt, reserve a table, etc because every business has LINE. You can pay for things with it by letting someone scan your code or or pay for things online b…

That's fascinating. So if it's compromised, _everything_ is compromised?

The amount of personal data left in chats would be worrying for sure. Not to mention security culture is not really tight here. I’ve had hotels ask me to send a picture of my credit card for payment a few times.

As far as other things being compromised, I’d just deauth line from my bank account.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#392
post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Probably because it was a generic ideological comment, pointing further in the direction of generic ideological flamewar, which is tedious and repetitive and something we're trying to avoid here. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ? You broke more than one of them here—I'm sure unintentionally…

Makes sense. Thanks for the heads up.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Socialist economies need growth or else all your citizens start leaving and you have to build a wall. That and it's cruel to not let their economy grow when everyone started out in poverty. China is obsessed with economic growth. Hardly any economic motivations are removed by getting rid of shareholder capitalism; you still have markets, a growing population, and you still need productivity to increase. Oh, and elimi…

I agree. However, the type of growth you're addressing here is different from the growth in social media companies. The growth in ad-tech based companies are by nature very artificial when put in economic terms. One can easily argue that these companies provide value by enhancing the reach and personalization of your marketing activities which results in increased sales and brand exposure. But at the very end of the day, how is an ever increasing of consumer spending GDP going to solve real life and death issues? Growth becomes relevant because capitalism is very focused on generating profit, you can either increase revenue or reduce cost, which one is easier? Increase revenue which then leads to, "let's get more users".

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#394
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Zuck doesn't own 50+% of the company (just the voting rights) You're right to clarify, but it's “Just” the only thing that matters. > Oculus, FB Marketplace, FB Groups and WhatsApp are all very relevant market leaders. Oculus is a “market leader” in a really narrow niche. Is FB marketplace really a market leader? I didn't even know that was the thing actually (it may very well depends on your country). FB groups is…

The ~$350 billion that those extra shares would be worth don't matter? FB marketplace has a billion monthly active users. That's more than Amazon and eBay combined. Anecdotally I know people who hated FB before it was cool that have returned because of Marketplace. The feed, Facebook video, birthdays, events and a host of other features are still significantly used. VR is a rapidly growing narrow niche which Oculus i…

> The ~$350 billion that those extra shares would be worth don't matter?

Zuck has all power needed to decide if he wants those extra billions. I argue that he has no valuable reasons to want them and he's destroying his company's future by getting them. Amazon would never have become what it is now if Bezos managed it this way, and Facebook would be much, much more powerful if Zuck managed it the way Bezos did.

> Disliking FB/Meta ≠ FB/Meta being irrelevant. There are billions of users left to come online and odds are that Meta products will be amongst the first they use.

Being relevant ≠ having users. Yahoo! had hundred millions of users long after it stopped being relevant. Like Yahoo! Facebook is now running almost exclusively on its inertia, and every year short-profit guided decisions are actually harming Facebook's position.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#395

Posting from a throwaway account to avoid any backlash. I know early, early Facebook employees, like from when the company was just a handful of people. A lot of these people are incredible impressive, capable, creative, risk-tolerant, etc... it's actually intimidating and I don't want to make it sound like I'm at their level at all. Also, we don't keep up anymore - and they haven't worked there in ages - but I back…

Makes sense. Even from the outside the absolute interest of the 2005 generation in Myspace YouTube and Facebook was extraordinary at the time.

I imagine from the inside it must have been an amazing high to be part of Facebook Twitter YouTube.

Trying to recapture that high of being the absolute crest of the wave of the future makes sense as a motivation for someone who has it all.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#396
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Facebook Messenger seems to rule the roost here in NZ, WhatsApp probably a close second.
Post reply on HN