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When Zuckerberg Asserted Control, Instagram’s Founders Chafed
- gotwilly 8y agoDoesn't "Probably not, he said. At least, not as quickly." and "Perhaps. Eventually." mean essentially the same thing?
- arcticbull 8y agoIMO its a different tone. The first says "no. well... maybe..." [I don't want to undercut the value of the property] whereas the other says "yes. well... maybe..." [I don't want to appear unappreciative of the resources of the company that owns mine].
- whytaka 8y agoTo be annoyingly precise, the second says: "Maybe, well... yes."
- arcticbull 8y agoFair! :) I see how you read it that way; to me perhaps is corporate speak for a noncommittal yes, and eventually is a way of making it even less committal by specifying a long timeline. I mean, anything could happen eventually, it just depends on when you mean.
- jovial_cavalier 8y agoNYT "journalists" do not care if the drivel they produce even makes sense, they only care to impart a tone. In this instance, they desired to use this as a setup for a confrontational dynamic between Zuckerberg and the original founders, even though they essentially are saying the same thing.
- diminoten 8y agoYeah, the whole article felt like it hinged on the difference between those two statements, but I was struck by how similar they actually were.
- roymurdock 8y agoZuckerberg: Take the money. Acton: I'm not taking it. Z: Just take it. A: No! Z: Look, I don't give a fuck, but the boys'll feel better. A: Fuck their feelings! Z: [Brian], we're a team. A: A team? You guys are fucking insane. I'll go back to the Valley, I'll [create messaging apps]. It can't be like this. Z: It is. I'm sorry, but it is. It's ugly, but it's necessary. A: I became a [developer] to put away dealers and criminals, not to be one. Z: You sound just like me. I know what you're going through and feeling. You're scared. A: I'm not. Z: Yes, you are. Everyone goes through that the first time. I did. The sooner you match what's in your head...with what's in the real world...the better you'll feel. Z: In this business...you gotta have dirt on you to be trusted. When all this is behind you, a whole other world will open up for you. Z: I walk a higher path, son. Z: I have the keys to all the doors.
- glockenspielen 8y agoIs this a joke?
- jbigelow76 8y agoIt's the transcripts they'll recite during the canonization of St. Acton, patron saint of "After I get Mine".
- sp527 8y agoLol at the flak being hurled at this guy like we wouldn't all do exactly the same thing, were we in his position.
- jbigelow76 8y agoNot true, I would have stuck it out for another year for the extra $850 million.
- Apocryphon 8y agoAnd then used it to build a tech antitrust Super PAC!
- louwrentius 8y agoIt's a lot easier to stand for your principles and say no to $850M if you already own billions...
- bogomipz 8y agoIndeed, how much of a moral stance is it when you only make it on the last billion?
- philipov 8y agoIt isn't a moral stance. This is PR.
- gojomo 8y agoThis story focuses on the Instagram founders. By staying 6 years, they've probably already received all compensation related to the original acquisition, so they're only "saying no" to continued salaries/management-incentives – not "$850M".
- quickthrower2 8y agoAnyone with say ~$2M (give or take a magnitude) could easily say no to more money and be pretty happy, but humans being what they are...
- ImprovedSilence 8y agoHell no, are you crazy! The average Joe needs at least 2.5-3M to retire by 65, let alone 20s or 30s. That number needs upped an order of magnitude. And I'm sure there's plenty of people that would say my number needs upped an order of magnitude too.
- ddingus 8y agoThat all depends on expectations. With just one, I would be set. No worries.
- 8y ago
- princekolt 8y agoSide note: For anyone interested, the third picture down[1] in the article is a fairly high resolution photo of a computer monitor where you can see Xcode and some very neat Objective-C code. [1]: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/09/25/business/25INSTAGRAM04/merlin_45856561_88d6defc-30be-44f9-acf5-9aef8849cb09-superJumbo.jpg?quality=100&auto=webp https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/09/25/business/25INSTAG...
- leothekim 8y agoHeh. The "shouldShowAlertForRequest" function is checking if a userInfo.message key equaling "Not authorized to view user". I would have expected something a little less dependent on a string isEqual check against an English phrase.
- weavie 8y agoBut, admit it - we've all been there at some point.
- dmix 8y agoUsually due to some "lesser of evil" solution as a result of some UI or system library, which in this case might be handling the alerts.
- quickthrower2 8y agoMore than one point
- mhh__ 8y agoIf it comes to something like that, I try to abstract it as much as possible (1. For my own soul, 2. Practicality) so it can be fixed with a drop in. Still end up writing a slightly nihilistc/suicidal commit message for the addition...
- wruza 8y agoASIHTTPRequest is one of those libraries that seem cool and easy, but lack a formal description on how to handle non-succesful paths. It likely just ends up there with generic error, and there is no way to check for a specific condition unless you use [isEqual:] on one of non-standard userInfo keys you found experimentally. Moreover, that string could go from a server error response, not from a request library. It is all text down the way due to how web is designed. Nothing here that would not pass a review, I think.
- dawhizkid 8y agoWhat do you really expect when you sell your company?
- aklemm 8y agoThis is certainly the question in general, and I'd like to know specifically what they thought the first six years at Facebook should look like.
- ianhawes 8y agoOne thing omitted from the Instagram genesis story is that they effectively stole the Hipstamatic "filters" feature and added a basic timeline a la Twitter. Sharing to Twitter fueled their growth from that point. And the rest is history!
- woah 8y agoSounds like they made a good product
- seem_2211 8y agoYes, because all that matters is an idea and execution doesn't matter one bit.
- tomjakubowski 8y agoAround the same time as these there was another app that made you drag a depiction of your photo around a mock darkroom to "develop" it with those "filters".
- MBCook 8y agoWasn’t that the app that had the genius idea to make your photos more “important“ by charging you an in app purchase for “film“ so you would only take pictures of things that mattered?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- code_duck 8y agoI’ve made some comments here previously about how Facebook has been ruining Instagram by making it into Facebook, and it looks like the founder agrees.
- Apocryphon 8y ago"Mark Zuckerberg was asked if Instagram could have hit one billion users if it had not been bought by Facebook. Probably not, he said. At least, not as quickly. [...] Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, had a slightly different answer to that question. Perhaps. Eventually. We will never know who was right." What if, Instagram had merged with Snapchat instead?
- naravara 8y agoFacebook would have leveraged its user base and clout to smother them in the crib. This is why they ought to be one of the first targets for anti-trust regulation. Any company that can leverage its market size to kill competition, irrespective of the quality of their product, needs to be taken down a peg. Google and Amazon should be close behind. And Apple needs to be put on notice. It's not even that those 3 companies are bad actors in themselves (thought they are and aren't in various respects). It's that their investors need to know that lock-in and megalomania as business strategies aren't acceptable.
- Apocryphon 8y agoWhile you're not wrong from a regulatory standpoint, I think consumer product-wise both Instagram and Snapchat were among the strongest challengers to Facebook as far as insurgent social media networks went. If they had merged- well, the leadership would be dysfunctional, but it would have been very entertaining to see Facebook on the defensive.
- naravara 8y ago> I think consumer product-wise both Instagram and Snapchat were among the strongest challengers to Facebook as far as insurgent social media networks went. Maybe. I feel like one of the issues with a lot of start-ups is that the engineers who build them and happen on the ideas don't have the business instincts to outmaneuver bigger, well-funded challengers. And when they bring on VC funding or people into their companies who do have those skills, they inevitably push them to the same sorts of unfriendly monetization and invasive schemes that the big players have. Very few people have the political acumen to tell investors to STFU the way people like Jobs or Bezos were able to, so they're just open to predation by VCs.
- 40acres 8y agoI'm not sure that Facebook using Instagram as a way to funnel people back to Facebook is a great strategy. Companies need to be willing to cannibalize themselves or someone will do it for them. I don't know if Zuck had the foresight at the time, but Instagram has obviously been an amazing hedge against apps like Snapchat. People like Instagram and Snapchat partly because they are less formal than Facebook, most users don't even know that Facebook owns Instagram, my girlfriend is always shocked (and a bit annoyed) when I tell her. I think it'd be smart to simply enhance Instagram's ad platform and be willing to cede Facebook MAU over to Instagram, at the end of the day the dollars all go to the same account. If people start to become dissatisfied w/ Instagram because of "Facebook-ification" that may open up a market for a new competitor.
- java_script 8y ago> my girlfriend is always shocked (and a bit annoyed) when I tell her. Is this is a 50 First Dates type of situation?
- etatoby 8y agoIt's more likely to be such an insignificant (if annoying) detail to common people that they easily forget about it in less than a day.
- da02 8y agoThat sounds intriguing. What is she annoyed? What apps (social media, news, or entertainment) are popular with her and her friends? I'm surprised why something better hasn't come along than FB.
- 40acres 8y agoI don't use Facebook so I can't vouch based on my own usage, but based on conversations w/ her she's been dissatisfied with Facebook for quite some time. She still checks it every day (this is the power of Facebook) but feels compelled to because it's the best way to discover events. I'd bet she spends more time on Instagram but Facebook is right up there. Other than that she uses Group Me, which is basically a big chatroom app, it can get overwhelming though and from what I know she's muted the chats.
- beguiledfoil 8y agoDo we have a name for tech that encourages compulsive use over any kind of deeper value? Candy tech? Sugar tech?
- moogly 8y agoSkinner box?
- ingenieros 8y agoYes, there's even a book about it: "Hooked" by Nir Eyal.
- taormina 8y agoAddictive?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jstepka 8y agoWhen you sell it. You take the money and it’s not yours anymore. Doesn’t matter what’s said, this is just how it is. This shouldn’t be confusing.
- wolco 8y agoAgreements and contracts can dictate otherwise.
- swami26 8y agoI believe Instagram's founders just rode the train until it was not fun anymore.
- ddingus 8y agoExactly. No worries all around.
- da02 8y agoI'm not on FB. I also haven't used Instagram for a while. How has Instagram changed in the last few years?
- willturman 8y agoThat's an interesting question! For $2500, I would be happy to curate a post for my 17,000 Instagram followers featuring your question in the text of a post of myself near a slightly off-trail vista at a remote yet recognizable exotic location.
- da02 8y agoSo you're saying it's a bunch of people trying to earn money endorsing merchandise and places?
- randycupertino 8y agoMore ads, more "influencers" doing it professionally, more people sharing text-based images and motivational quotes and memes, older crowd base of users, timeline now filtered by algorithm and not sequentially.
- j79 8y ago> timeline now filtered by algorithm and not sequentially Yep. It annoyed me to no end to learn that I had missed a bunch of images posted by a friend because they were never surfaced to me. It turns out my rampant liking (it's super easy with the double-tapping) of someone who burst-post(s) suddenly made me seem like I was a "fan" of theirs. In reality, I just double-tap everything.
- mhh__ 8y agoThe quality of suggested content is dire, more people using it and also it's more snapchat-esque. Also, messaging service too
- patorjk 8y ago> As Instagram kept on growing, Mr. Zuckerberg believed there were ways it should help Facebook grow and improve Facebook’s “user engagement.” That included small tweaks, like automatically sharing Instagram “Stories” videos to Facebook without clear signs indicating the videos were taken on Instagram. That's a little sneaky. I had started to notice more stories when I opened FB, and it was always the people I'm also friends with on Instagram. I hadn't realized that they may be coming from Instagram. > Earlier this year, Facebook also removed a shortcut link to Instagram from its “bookmarks” menu inside the Facebook app, a small but significant source of traffic that flowed from Facebook to Instagram. What would the point of this be? Why would FB want to shut off traffic to another one of their properties?
- revicon 8y ago> What would the point of this be? Why would FB want to shut off traffic to another one of their properties? They make waay more money off of facebook ads than they do from instagram ads. And they're seeing people dumping Facebook in favor of just using Instagram. They're trying to staunch the bleed.
- mhh__ 8y agoExactly. Facebook just isn't "cool" anymore, no one posts to facebook like they do with snapchat or Instagram, so why not?
- onetimemanytime 8y agoDuh, he owns the company. You sold it. FB needs to show xx% growth or else it's toast. So they start looking under couch cushions for pennies...
- Agathos 8y agoSecond-to-last paragraph really makes the article: > And their departure, despite its suddenness, does require some perspective. Both Instagram founders stayed on for six years after being acquired — much longer than entrepreneurs usually do after selling their company and long after they had received their full payout in stock. Dog Bites Man After Unusually Long Delay
- kapauldo 8y agoThe ego is astounding. Its an entertainment app. It's not cancer research.
- illteratedang 8y agoZuckerberg is Askewnazi midget who calls other 'dumb' just because they trust him. How can he assert control over Instagram?
- afpx 8y agoGood for Zuckerberg. He bought it, he owns it, and he can do whatever he wants with it. I don’t get the sympathy for the Instagram founders. They sold it and made a quick fortune. Detach, drop out, and have some fun.