Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#121

Post by uoaei » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

toper-centage wrote: post #107

k__ wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Meanwhile snapchat pushed for weird tv shows and sponsored and featured stories, pushing friend stories to the tiny row on top. It's like they do it on purpose to alienate users in exchange for short time increase in "engagement".

These sorts of metrics are interesting to investors at a quarterly timescale.

Understanding these phenomena is easier when you think of it solely in terms of the bottom line.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#122

Post by beenBoutIT » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

Miner49er wrote: post #114

asutekku wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will flock in where other people are. Unless Instagram gets a decent competitor, people will just get used to it.

Well there already is a competitor - TikTok. As it stands, if I only care about the TikTok/Reels functionality, I'm going with TikTok. It doesn't come with all the extra bloat. I guess we'll see what happens with the potential Trump ban and Microsoft acquisition though.

If Microsoft acquires TikTok how would they go about vetting all of the code to remove any potentially malicious components?

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#123

Post by bobthepanda » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:02 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.

To me WeChat has more in common with the old AOL or Yahoo web portals in a 2020 wrapping.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#124

Post by Miner49er » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

beenBoutIT wrote: post #122

Miner49er wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there already is a competitor - TikTok. As it stands, if I only care about the TikTok/Reels functionality, I'm going with TikTok. It doesn't come with all the extra bloat. I guess we'll see what happens with the potential Trump ban and Microsoft acquisition though.

If Microsoft acquires TikTok how would they go about vetting all of the code to remove any potentially malicious components?

What malicious components?

And how do you define malicious? Every social media contains malicious components, do you mean something different? I don't think TikTok is anymore malicious then Instagram.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#125

Post by kashyapc » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

For a moment, I read the word "reels" in the headline as a verb (meaning: "lose one's balance and stagger"), instead of a noun (film reel). But my mind quickly readjusted: "that doesn't make sense, because FB owns Instagram."

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#126

Post by staycoolboy » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

How can there be room for so many social media apps? One option is that all of them carve up the social media demographic in such a way that they have enough users to be profitable, but no majority. Another outcome is that teens are fickle, but if the platforms move from content creators to individuals, then it is no longer a social media platform and just the new MTV(s). I have no idea how this is going to shake out and I am fascinated by it, despite HN being the only social media platform I use.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#127

Post by staycoolboy » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:07 PM UTC

baby wrote: post #118

ffggvv wrote: post #93

why does everyone think they can beat tik tok just taking their existing content and changing the navigation to clone tik tok? people use it for the content, not the navigation style

That’s what they said about Snapchat

What is the status of snapchat? Does it still exist? Does anyone use it? How do they split time between TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and the other half-dozen platforms?

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#128

Post by octernion » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:08 PM UTC

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…

just to reinforce this, i tried instagram for the first time in a while and wasn't able to even find the new reels functionality. it seems buried among 100 other things instagram is trying to do.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#129

Post by distrill » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

carlosdp wrote: post #43

> Reels' video distribution algorithm will resemble TikTok's: users will see the most popular videos at the moment, rather than a selection tailored to their individual profile. That's not how TikTok works, the feed is really good at tailoring to the stuff you actually like to watch. It's a big part of why it's so popular. > Reels differs from TikTok thanks to Instagram's augmented reality effects, which let users ov…

> That's not how TikTok works, the feed is really good at tailoring to the stuff you actually like to watch

I think the author here is differentiating on the pool of available videos to show you. TikTok will show you anything (that fits your profile) from any user, which is markedly different from just showing you content from your social graph.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#130

Post by _2d30 » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:13 PM UTC

dimitrios1 wrote: post #101

dilap wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah it really feels like IBM in the sense that it had some really amazing engineers that built the company up, and after they left, they have just been resting on those laurels ever sense. What have they truly innovated recently?

The division they have helped foment in the US is pretty impressive.