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It's all the same. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat. People want a free way to broadcast to their friends. Someone invents a service that does that. Slowl
by themagician 10y ago
It's all the same. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat. People want a free way to broadcast to their friends. Someone invents a service that does that. Slowly ads take over. Now the stream needs to be "curated". It's no longer a timeline. It's no longer sensible. Now you can no longer reliably broadcast to your friends. People search for a new service that did what the old service used to do. They don't even realize that's what they are doing, but that's what they are doing. I've done this myself now what, a half dozen times? Every 2 years you have to do it again.
It's the same damn model. It's all the same thing. Sometimes I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Does no one see this?
Snapchat will rule until he ads take over. Your stories will slowly be interrupted by ads. Then your stories will fall out of time sync and you'll only get some updates or a "Featured Updates" or some other features that's really just a way to prioritize and guarantee ad delivery. And while this is happening someone will put out something new, that essentially does what Snapchat originally did in a slightly different format. Maybe square instead of portrait or GIF or Live Photo or whatever. But it's all the same thing. This game will continue forever.
All people want is a way to broadcast into a stream of content, and view other people's content in a timeline. That's it. It works for a while until you get too big. Then you can't pay for it and you have to start inject ads and resorting the timeline until it's no longer a timeline or it's a timeline full of all this stuff no one ever wanted or asked for.
When I was 15 I'd get home from school and run to my computer to check my favorite message board. I'd hit "New Posts" and see all the content from my friends. Cool new video game discussion, new video card benchmarks, some photos someone uploaded, some rant. Honestly, nothing has really changed in 15 years except the format of the content has been continuously updated to be technically (and culturally) relevant. But a post is still a post.
- jonknee 10y agoI would argue that Snapchat's ephemeral nature is quite a bit different than Facebook/Twitter/Instagram (it also makes it easier and cheaper to scale). Snapchat is similar to TV in a lot of ways and is going down a similar brand based advertising path.
- cloudjacker 10y agoWe get that. We also get that they are shooting themselves in the foot like all social networks before it. If they want to IPO and buy data centers and acquire a bunch of other burgeoning social networks while creating new features in the core product in a desperate attempt to "increase engagement" driving people away faster, then thats the exact route they are going on and we've seen this story already. From a consumer perspective, I and others hope they find a way to buck the trend. The real answer for them, and all these companies, is that they don't really need their engineers, designers and product team anymore. In the mean time, consumers will have to put up with the inevitable bloatware.
- Jordrok 10y agoOnly on a superficial level. How often do you really find yourself looking up your friends' five year old Facebook posts? On Twitter, the UI actively fights back even when you want to look at old tweets. Anything that drops off of the front page of the timeline is as good as gone, Snapchat just formalizes it. And for what it's worth, TV is becoming less and less TV-like every day, now that we have Netflix and on-demand everything.
- flycaliguy 10y agoI agree as far as likes, status updates and so on go. For photos though, especially profile pictures, Facebook serves as a timeline of somebody's life. I've been going to school with young people lately and I'm blown away that their profile picture album can trace back to childhood. It's freaky, I'm grateful to have been able to slide through my youth without public photographic evidence.
- jonknee 10y agoI don't use Facebook, but I frequently look back at old Instagram posts. Before Snapchat every photo service let you look at old photos (and indeed, that was half the point!).
- cloudjacker 10y agocrazy pills lol, I can relate to that Snapchat's ads aren't so bad fortunately. I don't like seeing in between my friends story, but I really liked seeing them in the city stories. It is kind of sad living in a place without a city story, its feel like a censorship bubble where people don't even know what they are missing. Sorry San Francisco, city story is life. The whole tabloid thing is a big wtf though.
- AndrewKemendo 10y agoI've noticed the same trend as well, and I think you're right that it's just a cyclical thing. There should be a comparable "eternal september" phrase for social networks. It's like there is a never ending "go west young man" for internet enabled communication platforms.
- frik 10y ago> Does no one see this? I see this, for me a social network gets useless when it introduces a "curated" newsfeed. Nowadays WeChat is years ahead.