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Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat

techcrunch.com

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Re: Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat

#41

Post by adjkant »

dvt wrote: post #7
meathook wrote: post #5

What do people think about "minutes per day" as a metric for success? I think it represents a fundamental misalignment of goals between users and the company. By this metric, the more of your waking life that can be taken, the better.

I don't get it. It's not like users are forced to use these applications. If users like Instagram more than Snapchat, they're bound to use it longer (which the article seems to imply). Hence, the metric.

Liking and use aren't necessarily correlated unless two things have the same purpose, and even then, not always. For example, I love Venmo but may only use it a few times a week.

Snapchat and Instagram share some of the same purposes, but most use them for very different things. This article is Facebook trying to say "Look we beat Snapchat at another thing!" in order to leverage their network effect power. What likely happened is they optimized their app to do exactly this with the goal of this press release (and ad revenue as well likely). None of this actually speaks to the app experience of either inherently.

Despite both having app use times over 30 minutes, the reasons for each are entirely different. Instagram is because you are scrolling on a feed. Snapchat is because you're messaging people or taking pictures to send.

Re: Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat

#42

Post by adjkant »

dvt wrote: post #38
_tulpa wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that the app is morally ambiguous unless you know what habits it teaches the user. What if it teaches users the habit of selling crack cocaine? (stupid example, but you get the point)

Actually you're right. I think that's a fair point. It probably needs to be analyzed on a case-by-case basis. In that vein of thought, maybe OP had a point. Snapchat/Instagram seems to feed our narcissistic egos more than anything, so maybe it's not as morally inert as I had thought.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdynfVNbJ5E

PS: Despite being recorded "with a potato", to borrow the first comment, very relevant to basically all social media and moral good. And Bo Burnham is an amazing watch generally anyways, PSA. All of his specials are gold.

Re: Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat

#43

Post by adventured »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #34
malloryerik wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spain qualifies as a poor country? Damn...

The amazing part of Spain being a poor country is that all Arab countries combined have a lower GDP than Spain. The Bay Area has a larger GDP than the country of Mexico.

> The amazing part of Spain being a poor country is that all Arab countries combined have a lower GDP than Spain.

That's not true.

Spain: $1.23 trillion

Saudi Arabia: $639b, UAE: $371b, Egypt: $332b

Those three combined are larger than Spain's economy.

Then you also have Iraq: $167b, Algeria: $160b Qatar: $156b, Morocco: $103b, Sudan $94b, etc.

Re: Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat

#44

Post by alaskamiller »

nv-vn wrote: post #28

The whole point of Snapchat is that it's not about sitting down, taking a high quality photo, editing it, etc. It's a messaging app meant for quick replies. You send someone something and they reply back. That's fundamentally different from Instagram's model of user interaction. It's like comparing time spent in iMessage to time spent on YouTube: it doesn't make sense.

Nope.

Now the point of snapchat is to binge watch videos of other people.

Snapchat sells ads the same way the media company does. So their KPI is time spent, like how a broadcast company determines ad rates.

Their strategy is to detach the accountability of clicks or performance.

You spend six figures with Snap to impress your brands to the same demo (Gen Z) that used to tune in to MTV (Gen X) and Youtube (Gen Y).

As such, here Instagram is following suit. Vertical scrolling is just manual scrubbing.

Re: Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat

#45

Post by what_ever »

hahahsnap wrote: post #22
yellow_postit wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Snap not want to grow the number of users?

Do you think running a social media app which is multimedia heavy for developing countries give you profit? Sorry that's not true. Facebook generated revenue of ~25 million for 2016 in India. Supporting 100s of millions of users content for 25M dollars. I'm sorry this is a lossy business but good thing to keep increasing number of users to pump up the stock price and keep engineers motivated. Snapchat won't go to cou…

If you see this thread, you are the only one defending Snap and you yourself have uninstalled Instagram. I personally used both for a while and now I have pretty much stopped using Snapchat in favor of Instagram.

Sure Snapchat is still the more known of the two when it comes to sending photos directly but that's not where money is made. Money is made in stories by having sponsored stories and ads inserted between the stories of the people you follow. Instagram is getting more of this so they can show more ads and make more money. Also, the advertisers you seem to be so sure of being on Snapchat will move their money to Instagram once they know that Instagram has more users and more eyes. Also teenagers don't make any money to spend on things after watching the ads. So I am not sure if that's a positive in favor of Snapchat.

If five people are telling they think this is looking good for Instagram which you have already uninstalled, may be its time to look back at your opinions. But who am I to tell, I don't have any horse in this race. I do own some $FB but not enough to think about this one way or the other.

Re: Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat

#46

Post by ndr »

dvt wrote: post #7
meathook wrote: post #5

What do people think about "minutes per day" as a metric for success? I think it represents a fundamental misalignment of goals between users and the company. By this metric, the more of your waking life that can be taken, the better.

I don't get it. It's not like users are forced to use these applications. If users like Instagram more than Snapchat, they're bound to use it longer (which the article seems to imply). Hence, the metric.

timewellspent.io

Re: Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat

#47

Post by aphexbr »

malloryerik wrote: post #26
vit05 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, Evan Spiegel has said they do not want to expand to poor countries like India and Spain. And he doesn't care so much about the Android version. http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/snapchat-evan-spiegel-only-...

Spain qualifies as a poor country? Damn...

I'm in Spain, and I know a lot of local Snapchat users. Not sure what he's on about.

Re: Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat

#48

Post by Veen »

dvt wrote: post #24
yellow_postit wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See "Hooked" by Nir Eyal which is all about how to get people addicted to your product. Hence time glued to app metrics.

Well, I guess we have different a different understanding of addiction. Building a great habit-forming app (what Hooked is about) is slightly different than selling crack-cocaine. I would argue one is morally acceptable (building the app) and the other isn't (selling crack-cocaine).

When thousands of very intelligent and highly motivated people dedicate their lives to creating applications that exploit human cognitive and social systems for advertising money, it's something to be concerned about.

Attention is a zero sum resource, and humans can be manipulated into spending their time in ways that are not in their best interest.

Edit: Tristan Harris has written interestingly on this topic:

http://www.tristanharris.com/2016/05/how-technology-hijacks-...

Re: Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat

#50

Post by izacus »

Rjevski wrote: post #49

An app with a decent UX surpasses a shitty one with dreadful UX - who would've thought?

Yeah - I think everyone here just ignores how dreadful the Snapchat app is on Android phones. It's so dreadful that even non-techy users which usually don't care about app quality jumped ship from Snapchat to Instagram. A lot of iPhone users followed because that's where the content is now.
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