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Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

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Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#181

Post by skydhash »

rmsaksida wrote: post #169
bastardoperator wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why login to anything at all? Why use whatsapp, telegram, or signal when every phone already does this and has been doing this for years? I have all of my friends and family in specific groups devoid of any specific apps. To be fair people were saying the same thing 20 years ago when AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger and Yahoo messenger were the big thing. All messaging platforms will eventually die is my experience thus far.

In many countries, SMS isn't free (or didn't used to be). That's the reason why Whatsapp was successful in the first place, it was cheaper to use Whatsapp over data than to use SMS for texting.

A single data point: In Haiti, SMS was 1 HTG/message. With 10 HTG, you could activate a plan for the whole day that was more than enough to use WhatsApp for unlimited text and pictures (MMS was not a thing). Now, SMS is only used for carrier ads and 2FA.

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#183

Post by zaat »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #179
cloutchaser wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is a very silly and ignorant argument, especially when so many other smart people say Zuckerberg is insanely ambitious and smart. If building a $1trn company would be this easy everyone would be doing it.

> If building a $1trn company would be this easy everyone would be doing it. He didn't build 1 trillion dollar company -his team did. He was just there at the right time and did the right thing when he developed the initial version of Facebook, something any somewhat competent full stack developer can do -and I am explicitly talking about the initial version, not the planet scale real time super systems his team late…

Others did try, before and after he did. Are you arguing that all that was needed to get Facebook to where it is now is owning Facebook at the time and having the access to engineering team? There is the whole problem of hiring them, managing their manager,and in addition to the tech, there's the whole domain of the business.

Mark is famous for keeping decision privileges to himself and for being central managed who's very involved in the business. Are you arguing that the successful results of his decisions are arbitrary? That doesn't make sense - like I said, others tried before him, even got some traction but lost the game. Others tried afterwards, Google for example, and lost. He survived snap. He incorporated Insta and Whatsapp. Do you really think that any average fool with the ship and the money could get some smart guys to sail the seas for him?

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#184

Post by cloutchaser »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #179
cloutchaser wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is a very silly and ignorant argument, especially when so many other smart people say Zuckerberg is insanely ambitious and smart. If building a $1trn company would be this easy everyone would be doing it.

> If building a $1trn company would be this easy everyone would be doing it. He didn't build 1 trillion dollar company -his team did. He was just there at the right time and did the right thing when he developed the initial version of Facebook, something any somewhat competent full stack developer can do -and I am explicitly talking about the initial version, not the planet scale real time super systems his team late…

I see comments like this all the time on HN. It's a bit pointless replying, because your views are so black and white, but you really have no idea how much value there is in taking risk, leading a team, and executing well. These are gifts given to very few people on the planet. That's WHY there are so few 1trn companies.

The ultimate question is:

There are hundreds of thousands of good dev teams, why don't they all build $1trn companies.

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#185

Post by bedast »

rchaud wrote: post #172
exabrial wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pixelfed looks incredible, but we need all of the "influencers" to install it for it to matter

How did TikTok become popular without influencers?

It's probably a combination of things that exist today, that did not exist when Vine was around, which did have influencers and still failed.

Tiktok started as a Chinese only service. China has restricted access to the global internet, so having their own video social media platform was a big deal. It built up a huge audience.

When it went global, it had a built-in audience of viewers and creators. Yeah, they may be Chinese, but an American or British or what-have-you outside of China person posting a video on there and watching viewer counts go brrrrr makes you want to do it some more. It attracts other users and creators.

So a combination of timing, exclusivity to a region with restricted global internet, and simplicity in the design makes it attractive. An excellent trojan horse to collect data on a massive number of people around the world.

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#186

Post by samlambert »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #179
cloutchaser wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is a very silly and ignorant argument, especially when so many other smart people say Zuckerberg is insanely ambitious and smart. If building a $1trn company would be this easy everyone would be doing it.

> If building a $1trn company would be this easy everyone would be doing it. He didn't build 1 trillion dollar company -his team did. He was just there at the right time and did the right thing when he developed the initial version of Facebook, something any somewhat competent full stack developer can do -and I am explicitly talking about the initial version, not the planet scale real time super systems his team late…

You are conflating building a company and building a web app.

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#187

Post by insane_dreamer »

rchaud wrote: post #173
insane_dreamer wrote: post #102

The fact is Meta is still raking in $B's in profit a year, so it's not like it needs to do this. Better to focus on long-term retention of users (through fewer ads) than short term profits. This is the problem with being beholden to public shareholders / stock price, and one reason why Twitter is likely to fare better under Musk (whatever you or I may think of him as a person) than as a public company.

Maybe they're expecting a large drop-off in daily users over the next 6 months and are trying to cushion the expected drop in revenue by jacking up the number of ads.

They have to keep growing revenue / profits in order to keep the shareprice up and satisfy shareholders. It's not enough to have flat, or even slightly declining revenue (only dropped 1%).

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#188

Post by rchaud »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #187
rchaud wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they're expecting a large drop-off in daily users over the next 6 months and are trying to cushion the expected drop in revenue by jacking up the number of ads.

They have to keep growing revenue / profits in order to keep the shareprice up and satisfy shareholders. It's not enough to have flat, or even slightly declining revenue (only dropped 1%).

That's why they're cutting jobs too.

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#189

Post by marssaxman »

aNoob7000 wrote: post #44
ledauphin wrote: post #10

i check Instagram maybe a couple of times a year and it's almost exactly like watching your college friends' kids age from afar. Each time you see them, the sensation of how much they've grown is so overwhelming that you can hardly resist saying something along the lines of "I can't believe how big they've gotten!". except with Instagram it's, "this is so much less usable than the last time I tried it. Why does anybo…

Personally, I think the future is in messenger apps. Why login to Instagram or Facebook to see updates when you can have a family/friends group in Whatsapp/Telegram/Signal (pick your poison).

Those systems don't scale past single digit membership numbers. You could maybe keep in touch with everyone if you all had lots of sharded, overlapping groups, but what a pain that would be!
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