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Instagram’s CEO

stratechery.com

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Re: Instagram’s CEO

#111

Post by tomnipotent »

charlesism wrote: post #90
eldavido wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a daily reader of Stratechery. It's a very "MBA" publication: the emphasis is always on strategy, distribution channels, markets, sales and marketing, etc. It's a soberingly different worldview than product-obsessed, hacker/maker/developer-centric worldview you get on HN a lot of the time. HN definitely skews toward the entrepreneurial/business end of software, but there's still a real emphasis on building great…

> "It's not the technology that matters, > it's the strategy" Gross. That's the kind of meaningless ass-covering thing consultants like to say. It's a great claim because nobody can falsify it: "See, you don't get it! The increased clock-speed was part of their over-all strategy!"

Can you think of any examples where great technology or product compensated for bad strategy? I can't. But I can think of MANY examples of where great strategy compensated for bad technology or product.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#113

Post by tardo99 »

Instagram is very successful. But, I think people shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it's turned a substantial fraction of our teenage and 20-something population essentially into zombies. I believe it is a significant social negative.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#114

Post by emtel »

tardo99 wrote: post #113

Instagram is very successful. But, I think people shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it's turned a substantial fraction of our teenage and 20-something population essentially into zombies. I believe it is a significant social negative.

Hysteria. Do you know any teenagers? I have a teenage daughter. She's not on instagram, but most of her friends are. They have rich, full lives, are engaged at school, spend tons of time together in person, play sports, decorate each other's lockers on birthdays, etc.

Is instagram a net negative? Maybe. Are they zombies? No.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#115

Post by charlesism »

tomnipotent wrote: post #111
charlesism wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "It's not the technology that matters, > it's the strategy" Gross. That's the kind of meaningless ass-covering thing consultants like to say. It's a great claim because nobody can falsify it: "See, you don't get it! The increased clock-speed was part of their over-all strategy!"

Can you think of any examples where great technology or product compensated for bad strategy? I can't. But I can think of MANY examples of where great strategy compensated for bad technology or product.

    > I can think of MANY examples of where great 
    > strategy compensated for bad technology
Well, there's never a compelling argument that someone had a bad strategy once their product is a financial "success." They may have simply won a lottery, by the argument won't sound convincing.

Another thing that bothers me is: if you're making a shitty project, what is the point? You become what you do. If your project is bullshit, and you're spending all day strategizing, you'll wind up attracting idiots as customers, and scumbags as employees. Why bother... easier to go into banking or something.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#116

Post by uniclaude »

eldavido wrote: post #53
6stringmerc wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting perspective and glad you tied together the disparate lines of thinking. Merit in product is, unfortunately, a variable not predictive of success. The strategy component is critical - that is a beautiful, great product that is solving a non-existent problem is probably doomed. There's no path to riches designing the best roller skate wheel marketplace platform, but even a poorly designed gambling tool…

I agree 100%. Another point: we're actually talking about strategy (Stratechery/MBA worldview) vs. operations (build the best product, do things well -- HN view). This is a well-worn argument in business circles and it's funny to see it manifest here under a different name. http://www.davidralbrecht.com/notes/2018/09/strategy.html Hackers are operators :) I get the sense that strategy vs. operations matters different…

Hackers are not operators, in the context of hn at least.

If there's anything you see every day on HN, it's people relentlessly arguing about "building what people want", and "solving problems". One of (the?) most popular HN member, patio11, got a lot of this massive amount of karma because he gives a pragmatic and clear view of generating sustainable revenue in business. This is what the HN crowd likes.

The old fairy tale of hackers only focusing of products and ignoring strategy is long gone, and most people here know this.

It's not necessary to differentiate hackers and strategy people.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#117

Post by tardo99 »

emtel wrote: post #114
tardo99 wrote: post #113

Instagram is very successful. But, I think people shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it's turned a substantial fraction of our teenage and 20-something population essentially into zombies. I believe it is a significant social negative.

Hysteria. Do you know any teenagers? I have a teenage daughter. She's not on instagram, but most of her friends are. They have rich, full lives, are engaged at school, spend tons of time together in person, play sports, decorate each other's lockers on birthdays, etc. Is instagram a net negative? Maybe. Are they zombies? No.

I realize the plural of "anecdote" is not "data," but more than once I've watched 20-something women spend hours on end swiping through Instagram and commenting on photos. One particular time I sat on a train in Europe for 4 hours while a woman did that the entire time. Wall to wall. I respect the fact that you have countervailing experiences, but I do think you're underestimating the negative impact here.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#118

Post by dingo_bat »

overcast wrote: post #88
enitihas wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Zuckerberg refused a 1B $ offer from yahoo.

Zuckerberg wanted power, not money, that's the difference. Only a fool turns down a billion dollars. That's live the rest of your life doing whatever the hell you want money. Holding out for more billions won't change that.

Or maybe Zuckerberg knew that FB would be worth half a trillion USD. If you have that conviction in your mind, turning down 1B seems easy.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#119

Post by jarjoura »

tardo99 wrote: post #117
emtel wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hysteria. Do you know any teenagers? I have a teenage daughter. She's not on instagram, but most of her friends are. They have rich, full lives, are engaged at school, spend tons of time together in person, play sports, decorate each other's lockers on birthdays, etc. Is instagram a net negative? Maybe. Are they zombies? No.

I realize the plural of "anecdote" is not "data," but more than once I've watched 20-something women spend hours on end swiping through Instagram and commenting on photos. One particular time I sat on a train in Europe for 4 hours while a woman did that the entire time. Wall to wall. I respect the fact that you have countervailing experiences, but I do think you're underestimating the negative impact here.

Meh, just a decade ago those same women would have been flipping through Vogue and Cosmo. Media has always been a net negative for female body issues and relationships. At least with Instagram for the first time, they can chose to follow more enlightening things. Also seems far more empowering to allow comments on photos.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#120

Post by pas »

srinathkrishna wrote: post #19

Ben Thomson is one of the best folks writing about the business of tech. Such lucid writing and even someone who's fairly early on in their careers will be able to understand what's going on.

Usually his essays are information dense, but this was a bit of a let down. It would have been a fine tweet though.

And the constant amazement at the IG founders' extraordinariness is very tiring. (They are obvioulsy not dumb, but they mainly got lucky, as it's not like there were no other apps with photo taking and filters trying to make it big in/on the Apple App Store at the time.)

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