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Didn't they do the same thing when Snapchat took off and then blew it out of the water with Instagram Stories? There is a track record.

by ra7 5y ago

omot 5y ago
I will say Instagram is getting so crowded. Adding Stories to Instagram felt natural, but shoving Reels in, feels like a squeeze.
whyenot 5y ago
I would argue that they destroyed Instagram in the process. It set them on a path where they add more and more "features" to Instagram for legitimate strategic reasons, but in the process it turned a focused app into something now approaching the hot garbage that is the Facebook.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  The hot garbage app makes almost as much money as Facebook, so... There's that...
  - rurp 5y ago
    For now, but this whole thread is about accepting short term costs for long term gains. The overall direction of Instagram doesn't seem to be following that model.
- whiplash451 5y ago
  This book explains very well why and how FB destroyed Instagram from day one, cutting its core values (and therefore long-term value) into pieces. https://www.amazon.com/No-Filter-Inside-Story-Instagram-ebook/dp/B07TFB4R2S/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=no+filter+the+inside+story+of+instagram&qid=1643894964&sprefix=instagram+insid%2Caps%2C137&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/No-Filter-Inside-Story-Instagram-eboo...
eloisius 5y ago
During the time they added stories to Instagram there was still more signal then noise. I enjoyed them because my friends shared casually and it was actually fun to go along on their vacation or bike ride, and not just see the perfectly composed photos which are usually the more polished summary of what the stories covered. At this point, IG is Facebook. The feed is a slurry of signal, random suggestions, shitty ‘memes,’ and ads. When I stumble onto a Reel somehow, it’s the same crap. Stories worked for me because it was my friends. Reels is just random flotsam, and it seems like a ton of it is just reposts from TikTok anyway. Meta’s repeating pattern is to enter every new format, screw with the chronology and cram it full of robo-content until it’s unbearable to look at. That Zuck calls chasing short-form video fad a long-term strategy is pretty telling. They have nothing but crap to sell, and if (if) Metaverse turns out to be anything, it will just be more crap, but you’d have to have your face inside a helmet in order to to enjoy the boomer arguments, shitty ‘memes,’ TikTok reposts and whatever else the content slurry that yields the most engagement is.
aylmao 5y ago
There are plenty of parallels with what happened with Snapchat Stories, but I do wonder if it's the "same thing". Stories are best when created by people you know, and they're easy to create too. They're the type of content that would build off of Instagram's social strengths. The type of content people consume on TikTok, as far as I understand, is largely made by creators though. This is similar to YouTube; they now even get financial compensation directly for it too [1] (although apparently this compensation is not as good as YouTube's). This could be a Snapchat vs Instagram Stories situation, or it could be a YouTube vs Facebook Watch / IGTV situation. Facebook has historically been notoriously bad at creating a high-quality video platform, so if that's what it takes to beat TikTok I honestly wouldn't expect Instagram Reels to overtake TikTok anytime soon, especially considering a lot of what I've seen there are random accounts reposting TikTok content (which feels a bit like the type of content Watch became infamous for). [1]: https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-gb/tiktok-creator-fund-your-questions-answered https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-gb/tiktok-creator-fund-your-q...
whiplash451 5y ago
TikTok has way more momentum than Snapchat had at the time. Snapchat DAUs today: 300M TikTok DAUs today: 1B

Didn't they do the same thing when Snapchat took off and then blew it out of the water with Instagram Stories? There is a track record.

by ra7 5y ago

Didn't they do the same thing when Snapchat took off and then blew it out of the water with Instagram Stories? There is a track record.

omot 5y ago

I will say Instagram is getting so crowded. Adding Stories to Instagram felt natural, but shoving Reels in, feels like a squeeze.

whyenot 5y ago

I would argue that they destroyed Instagram in the process. It set them on a path where they add more and more "features" to Instagram for legitimate strategic reasons, but in the process it turned a focused app into something now approaching the hot garbage that is the Facebook.

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
The hot garbage app makes almost as much money as Facebook, so... There's that...
- rurp 5y ago
  For now, but this whole thread is about accepting short term costs for long term gains. The overall direction of Instagram doesn't seem to be following that model.
whiplash451 5y ago
This book explains very well why and how FB destroyed Instagram from day one, cutting its core values (and therefore long-term value) into pieces. https://www.amazon.com/No-Filter-Inside-Story-Instagram-ebook/dp/B07TFB4R2S/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=no+filter+the+inside+story+of+instagram&qid=1643894964&sprefix=instagram+insid%2Caps%2C137&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/No-Filter-Inside-Story-Instagram-eboo...

eloisius 5y ago

During the time they added stories to Instagram there was still more signal then noise. I enjoyed them because my friends shared casually and it was actually fun to go along on their vacation or bike ride, and not just see the perfectly composed photos which are usually the more polished summary of what the stories covered. At this point, IG is Facebook. The feed is a slurry of signal, random suggestions, shitty ‘memes,’ and ads. When I stumble onto a Reel somehow, it’s the same crap. Stories worked for me because it was my friends. Reels is just random flotsam, and it seems like a ton of it is just reposts from TikTok anyway. Meta’s repeating pattern is to enter every new format, screw with the chronology and cram it full of robo-content until it’s unbearable to look at. That Zuck calls chasing short-form video fad a long-term strategy is pretty telling. They have nothing but crap to sell, and if (if) Metaverse turns out to be anything, it will just be more crap, but you’d have to have your face inside a helmet in order to to enjoy the boomer arguments, shitty ‘memes,’ TikTok reposts and whatever else the content slurry that yields the most engagement is.

aylmao 5y ago

There are plenty of parallels with what happened with Snapchat Stories, but I do wonder if it's the "same thing". Stories are best when created by people you know, and they're easy to create too. They're the type of content that would build off of Instagram's social strengths. The type of content people consume on TikTok, as far as I understand, is largely made by creators though. This is similar to YouTube; they now even get financial compensation directly for it too [1] (although apparently this compensation is not as good as YouTube's). This could be a Snapchat vs Instagram Stories situation, or it could be a YouTube vs Facebook Watch / IGTV situation. Facebook has historically been notoriously bad at creating a high-quality video platform, so if that's what it takes to beat TikTok I honestly wouldn't expect Instagram Reels to overtake TikTok anytime soon, especially considering a lot of what I've seen there are random accounts reposting TikTok content (which feels a bit like the type of content Watch became infamous for). [1]: https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-gb/tiktok-creator-fund-your-questions-answered https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-gb/tiktok-creator-fund-your-q...

whiplash451 5y ago

TikTok has way more momentum than Snapchat had at the time. Snapchat DAUs today: 300M TikTok DAUs today: 1B