51–60 of 484 posts
TikTok is banned in my country but friends from UK and US say that the algorithm is much better at recommending videos. True or just plain individual bias?
It's fascinating how reactionary and directionless Instagram and Facebook have become. Instagram in particular has become Frankenstein's monster over the last few years, pathetically trying to reproduce functionality from other apps. The latest cloning of TikTok's feed is almost embarrassing. It's a testament to how deep the lack of a creative culture at Meta runs.
What creative culture? A billion user beast does not know, need or want creative or culture. It wants profits and more of them, every quarter. TikTok's only 'innovation' is paying billions of dollars to teenagers to create meme videos. Instagram isn't losing to TikTok's 'creative culture', it's losing to American elite's favorite move - throwing money at a problem until everyone else quits, at which point you give ta…
TikTok has at least done three innovative things. One is the frictionless sign in that doesn't require an account, secondly the well done video editing tools and most importantly abstracting away the social graph.
And on the finance site this doesn't check out either. TikTok is on track to triple revenue this year alone and top creators generally make more money from outside sponsors and deals than from the company itself. Of all the social media site TikTok arguably chips in the least amount of money themselves.
Theory on facebook failure/Google failure to innovate: They have the highest leetcode standards out of FAANG. As does Snap. They hire people that basically memorized computer science algorithms. And so their employees are bookish, not innovative people. Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon do not have the same issues with creating new products. Keith Rabois (top VC), mentioned that FB has always prioritized optimization over…
- Maps
- AdWords
- Gmail
- YouTube
- Analytics
- Translate
- Calendar
- Sheets
- Docs
- Drive
- Meet
- Slides
- Drawings
- Forms
- Trends
- Alerts
I’m sure I’m missing a bunch too. IMO they’ve pushed the envelope in a massive number of spaces, and continue to do so. That’s an incredible number of insanely successful software products for a 23 year old company.
Edit: I was thinking web/mobile apps there, missing obvious big ones like Android, Chrome, self-driving cars, a bajillion Google Cloud products, Chromebooks, Go, Dart/Flutter, AMP, Bazel, Protobuf, gRPC, Quik/HTTP2/3-related innovations, etc.
Theory on facebook failure/Google failure to innovate: They have the highest leetcode standards out of FAANG. As does Snap. They hire people that basically memorized computer science algorithms. And so their employees are bookish, not innovative people. Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon do not have the same issues with creating new products. Keith Rabois (top VC), mentioned that FB has always prioritized optimization over…
I interviewed at Amazon in 2008ish and it was very leetcode-ish in its interview process. I remember whiteboarding a garbage collector. In any event, few companies have product direction set by engineering. There might be influence, but product tends to be a different set of employees than engineering.
I've interviewed at some of the FAANGs and like you said, I didn't find the Amazon interview format any less leetcode-ish than Google or Facebook. However I found that the level of rigor and was noticeably less than what Google or Facebook seemed to expect. Maybe this has changed recently, since the last time I interviewed at these companies was in 2019.
Theory on facebook failure/Google failure to innovate: They have the highest leetcode standards out of FAANG. As does Snap. They hire people that basically memorized computer science algorithms. And so their employees are bookish, not innovative people. Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon do not have the same issues with creating new products. Keith Rabois (top VC), mentioned that FB has always prioritized optimization over…
I don’t think the two are connected. It’s more likely that it’s because feature decisions at these companies are made by thousands of product people who have their own performance objectives, most of which are misaligned with the wishes of users.
Adtech as an industry would also be a factor, since it's not only not aligned with value/user goals, but working actively against them. I'm saying that as someone who worked in the domain.
It's interesting that they don't care, it's a Marie Antoinette-esque attitude to their lifeblood, and ultimately what will end their dominance. The truth is they converted a free service into a pay service (the gas-lights creators and businesses into paying for visibility). The visibility, even when paid for is not very fruitful for many as well... If you run a small business like a restaurant in the US, but get 40,0…
I think YouTube might be the one with the problems in the future. The younger generation seems to prefer the 30 second video clips, rather than the longer form YouTube videos. I think at some point Youtube is going to have to start deleting content, or restricting uploads. Their unlimited uploads for everyone strategy doesn't seem sustainable to me.
Facebook is absolutely dead. Nobody under 25 cares about it.
“I guarantee that every single person who liked and shared that post about bringing Instagram back to what it was, would spend way less time on Instagram if it reverted back to how it used to be” Sure, because they could get the information they want without having to wade through the mountains of crap you’re pumping out of the septic tank into your users faces. You’re optimising the wrong metric you fucking clown.
Maybe it'll show up in their usage numbers. I stopped using IG because it's near impossible not to prevent the sound from blasting from accidentally scrolling or clicking on a reel. I feel like a product team that gave any shit whatsoever would give people a mute button that stays put. People use their phones in lots of different locations (with other people around). And phones are constantly blasting music at random…
This means that I now have the opposite problem. I can't selectively unmute reels in my feed even if I want to. Instagram is 100% silent for me, even though my phone is not muted and doesn't have the volume turned down.
I really don't get it why they don't have a mute button on the reels themselves.
“I guarantee that every single person who liked and shared that post about bringing Instagram back to what it was, would spend way less time on Instagram if it reverted back to how it used to be” Sure, because they could get the information they want without having to wade through the mountains of crap you’re pumping out of the septic tank into your users faces. You’re optimising the wrong metric you fucking clown.
Theory on facebook failure/Google failure to innovate: They have the highest leetcode standards out of FAANG. As does Snap. They hire people that basically memorized computer science algorithms. And so their employees are bookish, not innovative people. Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon do not have the same issues with creating new products. Keith Rabois (top VC), mentioned that FB has always prioritized optimization over…