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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 in

by OzzyB 6y ago

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 by a separate app. Longer form videos bounce you to Instagram TV, which is just an app for videos that exceed some time limit, I guess? And soon, perhaps commerce will be jammed in somehow? Meanwhile, they have a Discover tab, or whatever it is called, which seems like it could be the default tab if they wanted to take a more interest-based approach like TikTok. But they seem to have punted on making any hard decisions for so long now that the app is just a Frankenstein of feeds and formats and functions spread across a somewhat confused constellation of apps. " Let's see if they're forced to make any "hard decisions" about their bundled UX in future... [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24049676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24049676 [1] https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/8/3/tiktok-and-the-sorting-hat https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/8/3/tiktok-and-the-sorti...

whywhywhywhy 6y ago
Spot on. I do get how Reels could eventually be rolled into replacing Discover or even the home feed but the IGTV thing is just bizarre. Yeah let's enter a mode where you start by consuming content 3 seconds long and then suddenly some of it is an hour and you have to hold your phone awkwardly not to touch the screen while you watch it. Really feels like it belongs more in the feed part than the stories part but I guess no one would watch it then.
- throwaway1777 6y ago
  IGTV content does show up in the feed also, which kinda proves your point that no one would watch it there.
  - whywhywhywhy 6y ago
    I thought it did but you had to click to activate it. Only watched one once and feel like that’s where I did.
hart_russell 6y ago
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.
- joering2 6y ago
  Yes, but were you a target audience of someone who would be clicking ads? You are not. My bet is that they do indeed monitor "ad clickers" and only will worry when these people start leaving en mass. Me and you - not so much.
- nsilvestri 6y ago
  Instagram didn't "win out" against Facebook. They fulfill two different roles with a few duplicated features.
  - Invictus0 6y ago
    Yes it did. Instagram is cool and Facebook is not. Now Snap is cool and Instagram is fading.
    - nsilvestri 6y ago
      I am on the older end of Gen Z and have noticed the opposite. Snap was cool from 2014 until 2019 but now Insta has a slight edge. I still use both but it varies by whom I'm talking to: some friends I talk to on Snap and some I do on Insta.
    - JoeSmithson 6y ago
      It's similar to how Bruce Springsteen and The Rolling Stones aren't cool, but still sell out stadiums. Facebook (the company) will probably settle into a stable pattern like the BBC's radio lineup, where listeners roll from Radio 1, to Radio 2, to Radio 4 as they age.
    - skellera 6y ago
alangibson 6y ago
I used Instagram for the first time 6 months ago because I'm old, and I was shocked that an app with such a rep for elegance is such a hodge podge of features. It really feels like they just glued a bunch of 'me too' functions onto the original core app.
- keiferski 6y ago
  Once upon a time it was quite elegant. Then, like everything Facebook acquires, it grew into a bloated "why not?" monster.
  - mcbutterbunz 6y ago
    IMO, its elegance came from its simplicity. It did one thing and it did it well. There is an ever growing demand for new features, not necessarily from users, to fend off rivals and to stay relevant and exciting. As with a lot of popular apps and services, it ends up bloated, trying to offer everything to everyone and satisfying no one.
    - burger_moon 6y ago
      Also when your salary is tied to feature development, bloated apps and poor UX is inevitable.
    - Rompect 6y ago
      > It did one thing and it did it well. Except it didn't, the photo quality on Instagram is really bad because of compression and it is not possible to share actual good pictures because of that.
      - wasmitnetzen 6y ago
        That's not what it meant to do - it was supposed to make your crappy early-smartphone pictures look nice with its filters.
  - Yhippa 6y ago
thekyle 6y ago
I think the trouble is that it's really hard to start a new social network from scratch, so when Facebook wants to compete in a new segment they just tack on the feature to one of their existing social products. However, as you pointed out this leads to feature creep and pushes users to simpler platforms. What I would do to solve this problem if I were at Facebook is to start new features out on an established platform (like they already do) until they reach a critical mass. Then I would completely break the feature out into its own app with separate branding. Hopefully I could get 10-20% of the active users of that feature to move to the new app and then grow it from there. It's a very delicate process each time you do it but I think in the long run it would diversify Facebook's revenue across many independent brands and solve the feature creep problem.
- k__ 6y ago
  "they just tack on the feature to one of their existing social products" After the rise of Snapchat Facebook tacked on stories to FB, IG, and WA.
  - toper-centage 6y ago
    Meanwhile snapchat pushed for weird tv shows and sponsored and featured stories, pushing friend stories to the tiny row on top. It's like they do it on purpose to alienate users in exchange for short time increase in "engagement".
    - uoaei 6y ago
      These sorts of metrics are interesting to investors at a quarterly timescale. Understanding these phenomena is easier when you think of it solely in terms of the bottom line.
    - chillacy 6y ago
      Such an odd decision... they had an app for private communication (the value prop was "you can be yourself when your parents and boss aren't in the audience") and tacked on the supermarket tabloids and celebrity news.
alehul 6y ago
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.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
  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.
  - alehul 6y ago
    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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat
    - ethbro 6y ago
      We used to call "super apps" portals. Mistaken valuations of their stickiness generally led to the first cratering of internet company values.
      - bobthepanda 6y ago
        AOL and Yahoo eventually died because there were individual sites that did the individual parts that they had better, and then they became less than the sum of their parts. Similar to how massive industrial conglomerates in America fell apart, or department stores when specialized fashion retailers became a thing. East Asia is just a lot more friendly to conglomerate structures in general. Korea has Naver and there's Yahoo Japan.
subpixel 6y ago
I recently got back onto Instagram for family photos and I still have no idea, or real interest in learning, what stories are. I'm too busy fuming at the avalanche of sponsored posts. It's an utter train wreck.
- Jimjamb98 6y ago
  Stories are simply for things you want to be temporarily visible instead of permanently visible to your followers.
  - subpixel 6y ago
    I don’t know what that means, how that works, or what to make of what I see when I click a story - so I never do.
octernion 6y ago
just to reinforce this, i tried instagram for the first time in a while and wasn't able to even find the new reels functionality. it seems buried among 100 other things instagram is trying to do.
cwilkes 6y ago
Instagram is like what I read about Highway 99 /Aurora Ave in Seattle: it is the American subconscious where it is a bunch of fitful starts where there was a grand idea but dwindled down to some Psychic stores next to Pot Shops.
spike021 6y ago
>And soon, perhaps commerce will be jammed in somehow? It already is... About a week or two ago Instagram decided to put the "Shop" or "Marketplace" button where the "Likes" tab button was... And now to get to your likes/follows/etc. you need to go to your profile tab, and find the "heart" button in the top right. But because the "like" button has been in the same place for the past several years, it's still ingrained in my habits to press where the "Marketplace" button is, so I keep opening the store page... I can't believe this wasn't on purpose...
- harsh3195 6y ago
  In my experience, often people just double tap the photos to like them on instagram. And since most people hardly used the button for liking, it was a prime real estate for shops to move into.
  - spike021 6y ago
    I think you're confused. The "Likes" button on the tab bar wasn't to like a post. It was to basically see the list of all interactions on your posts or new followers/requests.
    - Flowsion 6y ago
      This hasn't rolled out to me yet (Canada). I'd be super annoyed about this.
      - spike021 6y ago
        Makes sense. I assumed I was a part of some A/B testing group. It's terrifically awful. If you do get a notification, then pressing the "Profile" tab button now brings you to the notifications list view. But if you have "read" the new ones and want to go back to it you need to dig through for it like I mentioned in the OP. It's ridiculous.
jamestciv 6y ago
>perhaps commerce will be jammed in somehow? Commerce is already integrated into the stories feed, not only with advertisements as you scroll through stories, but with "swipe-ups" that users can use to sell or advertise products with. As much as this article paints a messy picture of Instagram as an app, it's still wildly popular and these issues don't seem to be hurting its popularity.
prgmatic 6y ago
I’ve used it for 8 years now and it’s fine, don’t think the UX is bad at all. Want to know for yourself? Go ask 10 non-developers.
WhyNotHugo 6y ago
> Messaging is pushed to a separate pane and also served by a separate app. Wait, there's a separate app for IG messages? For iOS? Link? I can't find _any_ references to it.
- ffpip 6y ago
  Yes there is one for close friends. It's called Threads. You can add anyone to your close friends list. So add anyone you like to chat to. If you want a group to appear in Threads, add all the people in the group to threads. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/threads-from-instagram/id1473867767 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/threads-from-instagram/id14738...

by OzzyB 6y ago

whywhywhywhy 6y ago

Spot on. I do get how Reels could eventually be rolled into replacing Discover or even the home feed but the IGTV thing is just bizarre. Yeah let's enter a mode where you start by consuming content 3 seconds long and then suddenly some of it is an hour and you have to hold your phone awkwardly not to touch the screen while you watch it. Really feels like it belongs more in the feed part than the stories part but I guess no one would watch it then.

throwaway1777 6y ago
IGTV content does show up in the feed also, which kinda proves your point that no one would watch it there.
- whywhywhywhy 6y ago
  I thought it did but you had to click to activate it. Only watched one once and feel like that’s where I did.

hart_russell 6y ago

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.

joering2 6y ago
Yes, but were you a target audience of someone who would be clicking ads? You are not. My bet is that they do indeed monitor "ad clickers" and only will worry when these people start leaving en mass. Me and you - not so much.
nsilvestri 6y ago
Instagram didn't "win out" against Facebook. They fulfill two different roles with a few duplicated features.
- Invictus0 6y ago
  Yes it did. Instagram is cool and Facebook is not. Now Snap is cool and Instagram is fading.
  - nsilvestri 6y ago
    I am on the older end of Gen Z and have noticed the opposite. Snap was cool from 2014 until 2019 but now Insta has a slight edge. I still use both but it varies by whom I'm talking to: some friends I talk to on Snap and some I do on Insta.
  - JoeSmithson 6y ago
    It's similar to how Bruce Springsteen and The Rolling Stones aren't cool, but still sell out stadiums. Facebook (the company) will probably settle into a stable pattern like the BBC's radio lineup, where listeners roll from Radio 1, to Radio 2, to Radio 4 as they age.
  - skellera 6y ago

alangibson 6y ago

I used Instagram for the first time 6 months ago because I'm old, and I was shocked that an app with such a rep for elegance is such a hodge podge of features. It really feels like they just glued a bunch of 'me too' functions onto the original core app.

keiferski 6y ago
Once upon a time it was quite elegant. Then, like everything Facebook acquires, it grew into a bloated "why not?" monster.
- mcbutterbunz 6y ago
  IMO, its elegance came from its simplicity. It did one thing and it did it well. There is an ever growing demand for new features, not necessarily from users, to fend off rivals and to stay relevant and exciting. As with a lot of popular apps and services, it ends up bloated, trying to offer everything to everyone and satisfying no one.
  - burger_moon 6y ago
    Also when your salary is tied to feature development, bloated apps and poor UX is inevitable.
  - Rompect 6y ago
    > It did one thing and it did it well. Except it didn't, the photo quality on Instagram is really bad because of compression and it is not possible to share actual good pictures because of that.
    - wasmitnetzen 6y ago
      That's not what it meant to do - it was supposed to make your crappy early-smartphone pictures look nice with its filters.
- Yhippa 6y ago

thekyle 6y ago

I think the trouble is that it's really hard to start a new social network from scratch, so when Facebook wants to compete in a new segment they just tack on the feature to one of their existing social products. However, as you pointed out this leads to feature creep and pushes users to simpler platforms. What I would do to solve this problem if I were at Facebook is to start new features out on an established platform (like they already do) until they reach a critical mass. Then I would completely break the feature out into its own app with separate branding. Hopefully I could get 10-20% of the active users of that feature to move to the new app and then grow it from there. It's a very delicate process each time you do it but I think in the long run it would diversify Facebook's revenue across many independent brands and solve the feature creep problem.

k__ 6y ago
"they just tack on the feature to one of their existing social products" After the rise of Snapchat Facebook tacked on stories to FB, IG, and WA.
- toper-centage 6y ago
  Meanwhile snapchat pushed for weird tv shows and sponsored and featured stories, pushing friend stories to the tiny row on top. It's like they do it on purpose to alienate users in exchange for short time increase in "engagement".
  - uoaei 6y ago
    These sorts of metrics are interesting to investors at a quarterly timescale. Understanding these phenomena is easier when you think of it solely in terms of the bottom line.
  - chillacy 6y ago
    Such an odd decision... they had an app for private communication (the value prop was "you can be yourself when your parents and boss aren't in the audience") and tacked on the supermarket tabloids and celebrity news.

alehul 6y ago

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.

9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
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.
- alehul 6y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat
  - ethbro 6y ago
    We used to call "super apps" portals. Mistaken valuations of their stickiness generally led to the first cratering of internet company values.
    - bobthepanda 6y ago
      AOL and Yahoo eventually died because there were individual sites that did the individual parts that they had better, and then they became less than the sum of their parts. Similar to how massive industrial conglomerates in America fell apart, or department stores when specialized fashion retailers became a thing. East Asia is just a lot more friendly to conglomerate structures in general. Korea has Naver and there's Yahoo Japan.

subpixel 6y ago

I recently got back onto Instagram for family photos and I still have no idea, or real interest in learning, what stories are. I'm too busy fuming at the avalanche of sponsored posts. It's an utter train wreck.

Jimjamb98 6y ago
Stories are simply for things you want to be temporarily visible instead of permanently visible to your followers.
- subpixel 6y ago
  I don’t know what that means, how that works, or what to make of what I see when I click a story - so I never do.

octernion 6y ago

just to reinforce this, i tried instagram for the first time in a while and wasn't able to even find the new reels functionality. it seems buried among 100 other things instagram is trying to do.

cwilkes 6y ago

Instagram is like what I read about Highway 99 /Aurora Ave in Seattle: it is the American subconscious where it is a bunch of fitful starts where there was a grand idea but dwindled down to some Psychic stores next to Pot Shops.

spike021 6y ago

>And soon, perhaps commerce will be jammed in somehow? It already is... About a week or two ago Instagram decided to put the "Shop" or "Marketplace" button where the "Likes" tab button was... And now to get to your likes/follows/etc. you need to go to your profile tab, and find the "heart" button in the top right. But because the "like" button has been in the same place for the past several years, it's still ingrained in my habits to press where the "Marketplace" button is, so I keep opening the store page... I can't believe this wasn't on purpose...

harsh3195 6y ago
In my experience, often people just double tap the photos to like them on instagram. And since most people hardly used the button for liking, it was a prime real estate for shops to move into.
- spike021 6y ago
  I think you're confused. The "Likes" button on the tab bar wasn't to like a post. It was to basically see the list of all interactions on your posts or new followers/requests.
  - Flowsion 6y ago
    This hasn't rolled out to me yet (Canada). I'd be super annoyed about this.
    - spike021 6y ago
      Makes sense. I assumed I was a part of some A/B testing group. It's terrifically awful. If you do get a notification, then pressing the "Profile" tab button now brings you to the notifications list view. But if you have "read" the new ones and want to go back to it you need to dig through for it like I mentioned in the OP. It's ridiculous.

jamestciv 6y ago

>perhaps commerce will be jammed in somehow? Commerce is already integrated into the stories feed, not only with advertisements as you scroll through stories, but with "swipe-ups" that users can use to sell or advertise products with. As much as this article paints a messy picture of Instagram as an app, it's still wildly popular and these issues don't seem to be hurting its popularity.

prgmatic 6y ago

I’ve used it for 8 years now and it’s fine, don’t think the UX is bad at all. Want to know for yourself? Go ask 10 non-developers.

WhyNotHugo 6y ago

> Messaging is pushed to a separate pane and also served by a separate app. Wait, there's a separate app for IG messages? For iOS? Link? I can't find _any_ references to it.

ffpip 6y ago
Yes there is one for close friends. It's called Threads. You can add anyone to your close friends list. So add anyone you like to chat to. If you want a group to appear in Threads, add all the people in the group to threads. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/threads-from-instagram/id1473867767 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/threads-from-instagram/id14738...