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Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

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Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#71

Post by zelphirkalt »

euix wrote: post #64

I find myself never actually using social media. Good friends belong to the same Signal group chats. I have several of these which consists of cliques I have built up over the years in school and at work and that's how I stay in touch. For those that are further out of reach there is email and linkedin if I really need to dig someone up from the past.

You seem to have well informed flexible friends, who are willing to try something "new". I wish I could get a handful of my friends to use something like Signal. Best even something not requiring a phone number. It's stupid that Signal wants a phone number. What has my phone number to do with chatting via Internet?

Any advice how to get your friends to switch, when they do not care much about their privacy and have a defeatism attitude with regard to guarding their privacy or simply do not understand, that their actions affect their friends?

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#72

Post by derivagral »

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…

Whenever finding stuff like this, I always wonder: do the authors know, and expect their audience doesn't? do the authors not know, and neither does the audience? I get the "you know your own field better than the writer" effect, but a very large group of people use and at least sort of know how TikTok works, right?

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#73

Post by me_me_me »

danpalmer wrote: post #59
me_me_me wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes, but it has limited growth potential. Latest generations are not interested joining it. So in 10 years it will be a dying platform. Kodak didn't die when invented digital cameras, but it was a downhill ride towards inevitable cliff.

This is just a branding thing though right? We've had all sorts of social networks that each rise and fall. If Facebook has the formula for a successful network and can apply that formula over and over again that's pretty successful. Facebook is probably the the company most able to claim to have achieved this, with facebook.com and Instagram being two big hits, arguably Messenger and WhatsApp too. TikTok is probably…

Who know, maybe its true. Though all I can see is: 'buying out promising products before they are going to become your rivals' mentality.

It might be a successful strategy to run a business when you are big enough to do it (as long as your buyouts are correct).

I heard about facebook from a friend when it was still exclusive and I joined when it was opened up. Now I open it up at what seems exponential intervals, and each time it seems my disappointment with the platform is also exponential.

Its a mess filled with garbage mixed with adds that pretend to be content.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#74

Post by 3pt14159 »

dleslie wrote: post #42
hart_russell wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like Facebook didn't learn their own lesson from... Facebook. The biggest reason I left Facebook was because the platform became a jumbled mess instead of its original clean interface. It's the reason why Facebook originally won out against Myspace and why Instagram won out against Facebook.

What lesson would that be? Facebook is hugely successful.

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.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#75

Post by mrkramer »

hart_russell wrote: post #21
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…

It's like Facebook didn't learn their own lesson from... Facebook. The biggest reason I left Facebook was because the platform became a jumbled mess instead of its original clean interface. It's the reason why Facebook originally won out against Myspace and why Instagram won out against Facebook.

Zuckerberg is very smart and his mission and vision of Facebook was very straightforward to make Facebook a social utility and that's what it is becoming. I think Facebook is a way to connect to people in a more general way but there will be always all sort of niche social apps like Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok etc.

Btw UI and UX need to evolve but to the point where they don't become bloated.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#76

Post by tanilama »

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.

TikTok however is the opposite of WeChat where the interface is dead simple and intuitive.

What is Reels immitating here?

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#77

Post by kristopolous »

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…

History maps to that theory but I would like to think it's coincidental and has more to do with the acumen and aggressiveness of the founders than of any natural generational churn.

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#78

Post by samcheng »

Comedian Jeff Wright had a great commentary recently on how Instagram has a history of copying upstart social networks (Vine, Snapchat, and now TikTok).

https://twitter.com/JeffRightNoww/status/1287842365126914048

(Coincidentally, I think Jeff Wright had his breakthrough TikTok...)

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#79

Post by alehul »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #70
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.

You're comparing apples to oranges here. WeChat is a "superapp" platform for doing distinct things: chat, payments, ticket bookings, etc. Instagram's features, on the other hand, are all purely social networking.

I wouldn't say the UX challenges get any easier as you grow from social networking "super app" to generalized "super app." If anything, it would become more challenging, and the top comment would make more sense as to how it appears intuitive.

On the topic of social, though, WeChat has private messaging and broadcasting, location sharing, a social feed of friends' updates, and public accounts that can push feeds to subscribers [1]. Mediums include text, voice, photo, video, and location, all shared through a variety of types of feeds.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat

Re: Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels

#80

Post by euix »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #71
euix wrote: post #64

I find myself never actually using social media. Good friends belong to the same Signal group chats. I have several of these which consists of cliques I have built up over the years in school and at work and that's how I stay in touch. For those that are further out of reach there is email and linkedin if I really need to dig someone up from the past.

You seem to have well informed flexible friends, who are willing to try something "new". I wish I could get a handful of my friends to use something like Signal. Best even something not requiring a phone number. It's stupid that Signal wants a phone number. What has my phone number to do with chatting via Internet? Any advice how to get your friends to switch, when they do not care much about their privacy and have a…

I find good friends often share similar technological viewpoints right down to the basic level. The people I have on signal are pretty much all cut from the same cloth in that regard. I.E. they tend to avoid big internet corps whenever possible and hack their own solutions.

For people I consider casual acquaintances or just outside of the "inner circle" so to speak, I just use SMS.

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