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Facebook Makes Moves on Instagram Users
- 40acres 8y agoFacebook scooping up Instagram has to be one of the best corporate acquisitions over the past 20 years. Hindsight is 20/20 but it makes sense that a simpler social network like Snapchat and Instagram would be a threat to Facebook once everyone's grandma got an account. A really interesting counterfactual would be a world were Facebook, Instagram & Snapchat are all competing.
- soziawa 8y agoDon't forget WhatsApp. There is absolutely no escaping Facebook.
- fredley 8y agoAt least with WhatsApp they only have my Metadata...
- 394549 8y ago> At least with WhatsApp they only have my Metadata... Only until Facebook decides to weaken or eliminate its end-to-end encryption. It's surprising that feature has lasted this long, since it's so antithetical to Facebook's business model of slurping up every bit of personal data it can.
- WA 8y agoPresumably because the meta data are quite excessive and telling anyways.
- avip 8y agoe2e was delivered 2016, WhatsApp was acquired in 2014.
- 394549 8y ago> e2e was delivered 2016, WhatsApp was acquired in 2014. Both WhatsApp founders have left Facebook recently, and they were much more privacy focused than Zuckerberg and Sandberg. My understanding is they protected the WhatsApp team from the culture of the rest of Facebook, but now that they're gone I don't see that continuing in the same way.
- soziawa 8y ago> and they were much more privacy focused than Zuckerberg and Sandberg. And just remember, those were the two guys who thought that transport encryption was too expensive for a messaging app.
- johannes1234321 8y agoSee this story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17238241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17238241 It's likely there will be changes to WhatsApp soon.
- ggg9990 8y agoThey won’t do that until they have a different app supporting E2E. Why would they voluntarily lose all E2E users to a competitor?
- 394549 8y ago> They won’t do that until they have a different app supporting E2E. Why would they voluntarily lose all E2E users to a competitor? I would like to be optimistic, but the realist in me thinks the number of users for which end-to-end encryption is a vital feature is vanishingly small. And maybe all FB needs to do to keep those users is to make end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp opt-in, so they can provide ~~"wonderful new features to you"~~ if you keep it off.
- Scea91 8y agoNot sure, but doesn't Messenger support E2E as opt-in?
- product50 8y agoThey launched e2e encryption after acquisition. There is nothing which suggests it will be weakened. There is now e2e encryption in Messenger as well if you want to enable it.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- joering2 8y agoMeanwhile their stock is up 30% since April. Either users don't care and will give up any privacy they have for a reasonably good "free" entertainment, or our Congress can do shit to the behemoth Facebook became. https://stockrow.com/FB https://stockrow.com/FB
- rch 8y agoUsers don't care about leaded gasoline either.
- XalvinX 8y agoI assume that is sarcasm, right?
- segmondy 8y agoAre they going to scoop up all future social network players? There are many more to come.
- Analemma_ 8y agoProbably. I loathe Facebook as both a product and company, but I have to give them credit: they're smart and they know what they're doing. They're not going to be caught out easily by the usual "disruption". Facebook knows the lifecycle of social media networks, and knows that the way to stay in front of the inevitable decay is to watch like a hawk for the New Thing and either buy it (Instagram, WhatsApp) or clone it and stomp it with network effects (Snapchat).
- rwmj 8y agoDon't they just have to look out for popular social media apps with large userbases? It's surely not rocket science. The complicated bit is heading off anti-trust regulators.
- skinnymuch 8y agoThere’s lot of popular social media apps now or from before. Most don’t succeed the way Instagram and Whatsapp have. So it’s not as simple as just picking any. Yahoo picked up Tumblr, look how that turned out. Look how Snapchat is doing right now money-wise. Though of course that’s tougher to say since Instagram had a direct effect on hurting Snapchat.
- stevenwoo 8y agoDid anything get better after acquisition by Yahoo pre-Oath? I'm actually fine with trying different things and failing, but my spotty memory is Yahoo batted 0.000, Flickr surviving Yahoo by being acquired by smugmug seems like a moral victory more than anything as a fan of Flickr.
- troydavis 8y agoIf they see any others as existential threats, yes, all of them. Facebook’s current valuation is $599 billion. Instagram was roughly $1 billion at the time it was acquired. Facebook could acquire 100 more Instagrams and have every single one of them fail - or even shut them down - without all that much dilution. (Cisco and EMC from 1990-2010 are successful examples of this strategy. See DataDomain, Isilon, Cerent, and arguably Crescendo for example acquisitions.)
- paxys 8y agoPeople have ridiculed every Facebook acquisition when it was made, but time has constantly proven them right.
- Keyframe 8y agoStill waiting on that Oculus deal.
- matte_black 8y agoIt’s coming. Wait till the third generation.
- Keyframe 8y agoAm waiting, no cynism. I just can't see a business case in that constellation, so I'm eagerly waiting to see what will come out of all of that.
- onetimemanytime 8y agoEven assuming that it all goes to waste....it's just $2 Billion. But it never works that way, tax gains, engineers hired, resale value etc...
- beefield 8y ago> A really interesting counterfactual would be a world were Facebook, Instagram & Snapchat are all competing. Obviously, antitrust laws are among the many things I know nothing about, but it still difficult for me to understand how they can allow facebook, instagram and whatsapp to be one corporation.
- aaron_m04 8y ago> Obviously, antitrust laws are among the many things I know nothing about, but it still difficult for me to understand how they can allow facebook, instagram and whatsapp to be one corporation. Corruption might be the explanation.
- ggg9990 8y agoRead the book “Chickenshit”
- lioeters 8y agoThe Chickenshit Club - "Why don't crooked corporate CEO's go to jail anymore? Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jesse Eisinger uncovers culture of cowardice, incompetence, and corruption in both government and finance."
- thucydidesofusa 8y agoIt's because anti-trust laws aren't well-equipped to deal with modern monopolies. the US's legal framework for anti-trust come from the Sherman anti-trust act of 1890 and the Clayton anti-trust act of 1914 (note the dates). The jurisprudence basically holds that being a monopoly isn't illegal per se, but what's illegal is abusing consumers - traditionally the cause of action in anti-trust lawsuits are that a corporation does something anti-competitive to increase prices. Facebook is mostly available at no cost to consumers (or at least, consumers don't have to pay to use the products) and so they avoid anti-trust scrutiny. To see it in practice, check out [1]. Some Japanese auto part suppliers were acting in an anti-competitive way and what got the DOJ so chuffed was that consumers had to pay more for cars and car parts because of the behavior. The Yale law journal has a great expose on the tension between our 19th/early-20th century understanding of abusive monopolies and the realities of 21st century commerce [2] and basically the core issue is that anti-trust laws are powerless to stop a company from acquiring the power to become an illegal/abusive monopoly. The EU has actually been much more skeptical/hostile of the arrangement between Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp , and the best legal thinking on using anti-trust norms to break up big tech comes from the EU. Unfortunately, I don't know much about it and I'll invite any expert to weigh-in. [1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/japanese-auto-parts-company-pleads-guilty-antitrust-conspiracy-involving-steel-tubes https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/japanese-auto-parts-company-p... [2] https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...
- zjaffee 8y agoIt's unclear if instagram would even be nearly what it is today without facebook, my guess is that both snapchat and twitter would've filled all the holes facebook was able to fill with instagram.
- guelo 8y agoI think the Youtube acquisition beats it.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- nbar1 8y agoI don't see this as an issue. Google does it with all of their products. If you own a flooring company and a cabinet company, you're going to try to convince your flooring customers to buy your cabinets.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoI don't see an issue, but I think it's funny how many of IG users STILL don't know they're actually using Facebook.
- minikites 8y agoWhy is that funny? Lots of businesses go to great lengths to segment their products and sometimes play them off each other (e.g. Blue Moon pretending to be a craft microbrew despite being produced by MillerCoors).
- qmalzp 8y agoI'm not sure how many people care. It's like finding out Pepsi owns Aquafina.
- Skunkleton 8y ago"Could I get a water?" "Is Aquafina OK?"
- airstrike 8y agoSorry, I only drink Dasani
- martin-adams 8y agoNot really any different having two jewellery stores opposite each other in a shopping mall giving you the feeling of choice. Only to discover they are owned by the same company.
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- cm2012 8y agoInstagram is a good 20% of most Facebook advertiser's account spend already. Not at all insignificant. For young and female targeted products, it's even higher.
- tribune 8y agoAs a member of the relatively hip 20-something social set in New York, I can say with confidence that Instagram is "where it's at" with this group. The introduction of stories and other Snapchat-like features has dramatically increased Instagram's usage among my friends (and definitely snagged plenty of app-hours from the former). Like the article says, Instagram is absolutely an escape from the hostile interfaces and hostile posts that abound on core Facebook. It's still cool and it's still fun. Whatever the internal power dynamics, it seems unlikely that Facebook would be stupid enough to throw this away. What do they care if their bread gets buttered through the Instagram app? Another interesting thing to note about Instagram is that a high follower count has become a status symbol. As people invest time and effort in building a large following, their commitment to the platform increases. It wouldn't surprise me if Instagram accounts for more than half of Facebook's value in the near future.
- bobwaycott 8y ago> What do they care if their bread gets buttered through the Instagram app? Three things immediately come to mind: A. They paid a lot of money to acquire Instagram and want that investment to pay off. 2. There are users on Instagram from whom Facebook can extract value and profit. D. If there is a way to make a buck off a user and their activity on a Facebook property, rest assured FB will take the step to make that buck.
- ggg9990 8y agoIt’s not surprising that the young rich beautiful people like Instagram. But I still appreciate that Facebook, Reddit and other text-based platforms allow an ugly person with a dumpy apartment and rusty car to publish their thoughts with the same format that Bill Gates would have.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- meesterdude 8y agoAlready deleted my facebook - not much stopping me from deleting my instagram next. But i'm not a very active user anyway, so i'm not sure if it'll make its way into the few folks i follow.
- Zelphyr 8y agoI don't know why this is getting down-voted because it is relevant to the article. People have had it with the caustic posts on and outright lies about privacy by Facebook so they're moving to Instagram. Facebook appears to mostly have left Instagram alone since acquiring it but now it is getting more involved since the trend appears to indicate that Instagram is becoming the profit center. But for people who mistrust Facebook, that is more than reason to drop Instagram. The thinking is, "I've seen what Facebook has done to itself. It's only a matter of time before they do the same to Instagram. I might as well get out now and find some better alternative."
- koji_ 8y agoLast 2 presidents got elected thanks to Facebook. Next one will be thanks to Instagram. Ofcourse with the Russians or whoever factory producing fake pics. It's happening in other countries already. A truly hopeless state of affairs.
- earthandmoon 8y agoThe problem will not be solved by you and me deleting Facebook, Instagram or Google. The biggest problem is your friends who share your name and number with these social apps without thinking and without your approval. And you can’t even ask these big social tech companies to delete it. That’s the really scary thing in all this!
- earthandmoon 8y agoI would like to add: the implications of someone adding your personal information unauthorised to these social networks has not been tried legally.
- ArmandGrillet 8y agoInstagram Stories is one of the most addictive application I have ever used. It obviously replaced Snapchat but also Facebook, Tinder, even WhatsApp. What are you friends up to? Check your friends' stories. Wanna see some beautiful stories? Check some influencers' stories. Wanna tease a party or share fun pictures during a party, only with your friends? Use Instagram Stories. This app is a dream for people in their twenties. The number of use cases this app created and the engagement it causes (the delay between posting a story and when it is seen by friends is rarely more than a few minutes) is really astonishing. Facebook will likely not die anytime soon, but Instagram is now the app and its acquisition was one of the smartest moves in the history of Facebook. If you want to learn more about the acquisition, I strongly recommend this article: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2013/06/kara-swisher-instagram https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2013/06/kara-swishe...
- rimliu 8y agoFor me Instagram Stories made Instagram worse :( But that's because I still look at Instagram as an photo sharing app, not social network app. I guess I will need to revise my views sooner or later :(
- subpixel 8y agoOf course stories and all the other modifications have made Instagram worse. The same way reality tv made television worse. But people love it and just eat it up.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- j79 8y agoDamn, I'm glad I'm not on this drug.
- 08978675645342 8y agoThe problem is not you and me deleting FB, Instagram or Google. The biggest problem is that your friends share your name and number with all those social apps without thinking and without your approval. And you can’t even ask these social tech monsters to delete it. So even if you are not there, you are there. And that’s really a scary thing!
- anant90 8y agoA for-profit business is moving levers under its control to increase its profits. Nothing surprises me about this.
- andy_ppp 8y agoWith all the mess that keeps getting added to insta, I would love Twitter to add a basic photos thing that was just the Instagram feed without all the Snapchat rubbish.
- grblovrflowerrr 8y agoI don't know about the states but Instagram is a major promotional tool for cafes and restaurants in Japan. People take photos of their drinks and dishes and share them on Instagram, tagging the cafe and a lot related tags. Meta-accounts with lots of followers then repost those and create buzz for the cafes. Then on the weekends the cafes get swarmed by people who found out about them through Instagram, repeating the cycle. If you're in a major metro area in Japan and want to find the on-trend coffee joints, check out Instagram.
- pull_my_finger 8y agoOne thing I noticed after the most recent FB fallout, was that FB started aggressively promoting ads for IG. Now I guess they are trying to recollect their users now that things have calmed down a bit.
- XalvinX 8y agoHard to believe a billion people use this nearly an hour a day....don't people have lives anymore? Sad, is what this really is. While there have been times I've used sites like reddit that much, it is a helluva lot different being involved in a dozen ongoing conversations about deep subjects than looking at pictures and saying the equivalent "ooh, nice picture! your cat is so cute." or "that latte art is so super keen" 100 times a day. Get a life, world.