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

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#141

Post by ethbro » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #86

3pt14159 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but it is especially uncool and if it stays uncool it will be a future myspace. Instagram is still ok, but even there. It's sliding. But I think Zuck knows this and buys up enough up and comers to probably stay ahead on enough things.

I find the MySpace comparison tired: * MySpace, at its peak, had around 75 MM MAU. * Facebook's core properties (Insta, WhatsApp, Messenger/Big Blue) have around 2.6 billion MAU. Even if I just consider FB core + Messenger, Facebook is roughly 20x larger than MySpace. Facebook, as a core product, also is growing in non-US markets, even though it has saturated the US markets for years. MySpace and Facebook just aren't…

A more cogent comparison would include total available markets at the time.

75m MAU in 2008 is very different than 2.6b in 2020.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#142

Post by beenBoutIT » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

Miner49er wrote: post #124

beenBoutIT wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Malicious as in doing things outside the scope of what Microsoft wants done.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#143

Post by nilkn » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

Reels isn’t going to compete with TikTok in any real way for a few simple reasons.

First and foremost, as a non-Instagram user, I flat-out can’t use it. A while back, when I was curious about TikTok, I downloaded it and was instantly swiping through a video feed that was already getting customized for me. I downloaded Instagram this morning and was presented with a wall to create an account. Nope.

Second, TikTok is new. Instagram is old. Young people want to use the newest social app that old people haven’t yet infiltrated.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#144

Post by cwilkes » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:38 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…

Instagram is like what I read about Highway 99 /Aurora Ave in Seattle: it is the American subconscious where it is a bunch of fitful starts where there was a grand idea but dwindled down to some Psychic stores next to Pot Shops.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#145

Post by beenBoutIT » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:41 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #138

beenBoutIT wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> If Microsoft acquires TikTok how would they go about vetting all of the code to remove any malicious components? Rename it "Skype for Teens". Make no changes to the codebase.

That's more like it, but seriously there aren't a lot of articles written about app acquisition and the process of going through and debugging a massive codebase. If they buy it, no one from Microsoft will ever write a blog talking about how the code was a mess and how their team improved it.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#146

Post by jimbob45 » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:42 PM UTC

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…

Everyone calls me stupid every time I bring up the fact that Twitter had a better TikTok before TikTok in Vine. The blinding fact is that Twitter has never once made a shrewd business movie in ~15 years and is piloted by nimrods.

Even now, they could bring Vine back and compete with TikTok toe-to-toe but they’re evidently allergic to making sound business decisions.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#147

Post by soluproj » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:43 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?

They’ve made some pretty impressive inroads on user profile security, specifically on company best practices to blow it off entirely

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#148

Post by hbosch » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

Miner49er wrote: post #109

alehul wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not a mistake in the short-term, but in the long-term it'll hurt growth. New users will find Instagram confusing and why signup and download an app for 3 different things when you only want one of them?

> New users will find Instagram confusing and why signup and download an app for 3 different things when you only want one of them?

At a certain scale, a person doesn't make this decision... their friends make it for them.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#149

Post by dimitrios1 » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

_2d30 wrote: post #130

dimitrios1 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People have been this divided for a long time. Social Media just helps exhume it better. Started in the 50s.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#150

Post by Avtomatk » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

nindalf wrote: post #136

Avtomatk wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not understand why this comment has a bad vote, hackernews looks like reddit, if a comment goes against your opinion, downvote without explaining the reasons. The only thing I disagree with is that Facebook does make big profits from its ads, in fact it does a tough competition to google and amazon... the rest of your arguments seem correct to me... facebook doesn't feel like the home that it was before... it fe…

That comment was downvoted because it was spinning unfounded and untrue speculation as facts. Here’s one example > Advertisers that are small to medium size businesses don't get a return from spending their money there, so they have left too. No, this is not true. Not only has Facebook done well in Q2, performance was unaffected by the boycott of large advertisers because of revenue from small businesses.

Ok I also agree with that, but what I mean is that in my opinion, nobody is an expert in everything, right? ... and if someone is wrong about something, they deserve to know the reasons and not just reject their opinion and leave ... then everybody ask why social networks become toxic ... here's the reason