Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

Post by dimitrios1 » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

dilap wrote: post #51

snowwrestler wrote: post #38

I still cannot believe that Twitter bought Vine, couldn't figure out what to do with it, shut it down, then had to bring it back as a read-only archive because there was so much popular outcry. At the time, the story was that all these other platforms like Instagram and Snapchat were adopting short videos, so Vine could not compete anymore. But obviously it was possible to compete, since an entirely new service --Tik…

My take on it is Twitter just isn't, as a company, very good at making software. This is from external observation and a couple of reports from friends who used to work there.

Post by sidcool » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

Post by throwgeorge » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

zelphirkalt wrote: post #71

euix wrote: post #64

I find myself never actually using social media. Good friends belong to the same Signal group chats. I have several of these which consists of cliques I have built up over the years in school and at work and that's how I stay in touch. For those that are further out of reach there is email and linkedin if I really need to dig someone up from the past.

You seem to have well informed flexible friends, who are willing to try something "new". I wish I could get a handful of my friends to use something like Signal. Best even something not requiring a phone number. It's stupid that Signal wants a phone number. What has my phone number to do with chatting via Internet? Any advice how to get your friends to switch, when they do not care much about their privacy and have a…

Post by toper-centage » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 4:39 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #54

thekyle wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the trouble is that it's really hard to start a new social network from scratch, so when Facebook wants to compete in a new segment they just tack on the feature to one of their existing social products. However, as you pointed out this leads to feature creep and pushes users to simpler platforms. What I would do to solve this problem if I were at Facebook is to start new features out on an established platfo…

"they just tack on the feature to one of their existing social products" After the rise of Snapchat Facebook tacked on stories to FB, IG, and WA.

Post by Miner49er » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

alehul wrote: post #68

OzzyB wrote: post #9

Quoting from the excellent blog post[1] submitted here yesterday[0] that stole my morning workout time: " Instagram is some strange hybrid mix of social and interest graph, and now it’s also a jumble of formats, with a Stories feed relegated to a top bar in the app while the more stagnant and less active original feed continues to run vertically as the default. Messaging is pushed to a separate pane and also served b…

As an American who looks at WeChat and sees a massive, unintuitive jumbled mess, you've explained in this comment how that could possibly be so popular in China! I feel foolish for not having realized that the UX must make perfect sense to everyone who has used WeChat since the days of it being a simple communication app. By that logic, I'm not sure we could say quite yet that Instagram's bundling is a mistake.