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It's interesting everything trying to be TikTok. As a user, if I wanted TikTok i'd use TikTok. I don't want TikTok, so I don't use TikTok. I use Facebook mainl

It's interesting everything trying to be TikTok. As a user, if I wanted TikTok i'd use TikTok. I don't want TikTok, so I don't use TikTok. I use Facebook mainly for hobby/owners groups these days as that's where a lot of them are. I sometimes use the market place. My feed is mainly my interests, motorbikes, local events, local cafes/restaurants etc etc. Then there's reels i never interact with which get forced on me every other week after clicking hide. The Reels are all short thumbnails of young girls of questionable age wearing little clothing in provocative poses/dances! They don't fit my usual browsing habbits, I don't interact with them but they force them on me as likely they'll gain lots of clicks from mid-thirty year old male demographic! I'm no prude but I don't want to see what look like children in my feed. We know why they do it though, they all likely get high clicks. Youtube is the same except content more relevant to me feed. I use Youtube for longer form videos, travel, motor vehicles, tech. They still insist on forcing shorts in my feed. Mobile has got particularly bad as they mix shorts in the feed timeline as regular videos. AndroidTV Youbtube isn't so bad but they are slowly promoting shorts there to. Not shorts but similar is I used Spotify for many years then it started forcing Podcasts on me as Podcasts where the hot thing. On my homepage where I had music which was relevant to me I had to hunt around to find my music as my homepage was full of podcasts I had no interest in so eventually cancelled my membership. It's sad when every tech company tries to replicate another companies features ditching the very thing which their users originally joined them for.

GabeIsko 3y ago
This just seems to be the strategy they teach at business school, and it never works. I remember in the 2000s, all these mmos were popping up saying they were the "WoW killer". Um, no, people who play WoW already play WoW, and you are really trying to convince everyone who doesn't want to play WoW to play a game that is designed to be very similar. It never made any sense. But I guess if you are a business exec, and you are risk averse, and lazy, you don't mind any of that. You just say "WoW makes money please make me one if those." That is not how creativity and innovation work though.
- mtgx 3y ago
  [dead]
- dmix 3y ago
  Big tech businesses always suffer from lack of creativity but most importantly they often lack a central product vision where someone can say “no”. What happens usually is some middle tier exec (or big name customer if B2B) will say, “hey did you see Snapchat new stories feature? We should do something like that” and then without careful customer research, or a product leader connecting it to an overarching vision, the devs just start work on it and it rolls out because it’s just there. Everyone needs something to do and everyone loves new features right? Blindly copying some other company’s new features or UI patterns, and pigeonholing it into an app without cohesive product-wide strategy (aka connecting it to what customers already like about your service but even better) is always the sign the company has entered mediocrity. Largely a talent issue and execs who don’t really care about long term product dev. People just looking at generic growth charts and hoping they go up and then buying other companies when their own teams can’t hack it, hoping they can seed some life, without fixing the root causes.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  > Um, no, people who play WoW already play WoW, and you are really trying to convince everyone who doesn't want to play WoW to play a game that is designed to be very similar. Is that really the goal though? You can have a successful MMO without killing wow. Warhammer Online, Guild Wars 2, etc. were all great games from the business perspective.
  - hoorayimhelping 3y ago
    >Warhammer Online, Guild Wars 2, etc. were all great games from the business perspective. OP said: >all these mmos were popping up saying they were the "WoW killer" Guild Wars and WHO weren't positioned as WoW killers. They were positioned as WoW alternatives that prioritized or PvP or had an endgame that revolved around PvP. Which is probably why they did well - they offered something that WoW wasn't good at instead of trying to eat WoW's lunch.
thomasahle 3y ago
> It's interesting everything trying to be TikTok. As a user, if I wanted TikTok i'd use TikTok. I don't want TikTok, so I don't use TikTok. > ... > It's sad when every tech company tries to replicate another companies features ditching the very thing which their users originally joined them for. I wonder if we might give this a name like "tradegy of the social networks". It's easy to see how a company, like Meta/Instagram can choose between keeping their own smaller market, or taking half the tiktok market by transforming their app to reels. They can't do both, as nobody would install a new app. For the users this suck, as the total market is now smaller, meaning less choice and diversity.
- cshimmin 3y ago
  Tragedy of the socials
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    Tragedy of the socialites? Tragedy of the socialite capitalism?
    - thomasahle 3y ago
      You are right, it probably generalizes to other industries as well. Say you have a shop and brand that sells chocolate cake; but a competitor appears that sells ice cream, and their market turns out to be 10 times bigger than yours. You could try to make a new shop, selling ice cream, but the lack of brand awareness might make it never take off. So instead you turn your chocolate cake shop into an ice cream shop, and use your existing customer awareness to catapult you into taking half that market. Good for you, since you now have half of a 10 times bigger market. Bad for the customers, since they now lose the choice between cake and ice cream. Ok, maybe the part about "using your existing brand" is where social networks are a bit different from other industries. There are hundreds of companies that could create a good social network, but the hard part is getting a big enough user base going. Probably this is less of an issue in the cake industry.
- Semaphor 3y ago
pixel3234 3y ago
> I wanted TikTok i'd use TikTok You want some experience, but then you describe how Youtube is forcing you to click through shorts and BS as that. I think power users should give up on direct interaction with internet. With youtube you can have a scripts that download videosm, and filter out shorts, ads and other garbage. With news you can just print everything on laser printer... Spotify should be exported as bunch of MP3 files... It is very easy to hire some English speaking assistant in India or Philippines, or have cron jobs that does tedious work for you. I think today, if you see ad on web, or you are directly exposed to some shifty behavior like Reddit does, it is major red flag for your lifestyle. Like when you live in an apartment without proper ventilation or with toxic fumes.
- zuppy 3y ago
  i (at least), as a power user, don't want to work for every small thing in my life. my free time gets spent on hobbies and friends, not on fixing the broken web. if i can use those tools with low friction, i will, if not, i will stop doing it entirely.
- visarga 3y ago
  > It is very easy to hire some English speaking assistant in India or Philippines, or have cron jobs that does tedious work for you. Mate, can I interest you in a bit of GPT? We got 3.5 and 4, good shit, you don't need to hire someone. The newsfeed is not a critical task, AI will suffice.
  - tjoff 3y ago
    GPT isn't nearly powerful enough for that.
  - cityhall 3y ago
    The solution to social media companies behaving badly once they have users locked in may not be to lock yourself into another unprofitable company's closed ecosystem that's temporarily free.
- cshimmin 3y ago
smole 3y ago
It’s how they’ve been taught to attract younger users. Cool new video app work to attract teens, we buy cool new video app. There’s a relationship between how social- or video-centric an app is and how well short form video fits into their mix. You can’t shoehorn it in. Not least if you feel obliged to because you paid some ludicrous sum to tout the name. For example, short form video feels ass-y on Reddit. It feels okay on YouTube, even if you don’t engage with it.
WeylandYutani 3y ago
They're just preparing for the inevitability of the US banning TikTok. And to nobody's surprise US tech will be primed to offer their TikTok clone.
- rchaud 3y ago
  Reddit cannot even deliver video properly on its own app, if TT is banned, there are at least 3 other apps that will crush it from a video standpoint.
damnesian 3y ago
It's roughly analogous to a tire company producing a lemon of a tire that needs constant repairs, then acquiring a chain of repair shops, Revenues are up, engagement with brand are high. The company seizes on those metrics, refusing to acknowledge the downside: the tires are bad products, which could easily tarnish the long term reputation of the company. But who cares? They have a steady trickle of income from their customers. It's a gamble, but lucrative in the short term. Short term thinking makes money, but dooms the brand to an uncertain future.
ajot 3y ago
The old Hotelling's two shops next to each other in the middle of the main street. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law
sheepybloke 3y ago
I only use Spotify for music, and recently, my homepage was all podcasts and audiobooks, with only 1 or 2 lines of recommendation for music. Spotify, please stop! You’re literally turning your homepage into something that is unusable for me!
- jtbayly 3y ago
  This is one of the main reasons why I canceled my Spotify subscription.
dabluecaboose 3y ago
>Not shorts but similar is I used Spotify for many years then it started forcing Podcasts on me as Podcasts where the hot thing. On my homepage where I had music which was relevant to me I had to hunt around to find my music as my homepage was full of podcasts I had no interest in so eventually cancelled my membership. Back when I got my car, I installed an Android Auto head unit and justified a Spotify subscription because I could easily navigate the AA app and play any music I wanted. I had a major breakpoint one day driving home from work, and there was *no* music on my main page anywhere. I had to scroll 3 full pages down to get past all the podcasts they were trying to get me to listen to. After that I just canceled my sub and went back to buying/downloading my music, 2007-style.

GabeIsko 3y ago

This just seems to be the strategy they teach at business school, and it never works. I remember in the 2000s, all these mmos were popping up saying they were the "WoW killer". Um, no, people who play WoW already play WoW, and you are really trying to convince everyone who doesn't want to play WoW to play a game that is designed to be very similar. It never made any sense. But I guess if you are a business exec, and you are risk averse, and lazy, you don't mind any of that. You just say "WoW makes money please make me one if those." That is not how creativity and innovation work though.

mtgx 3y ago
[dead]
dmix 3y ago
Big tech businesses always suffer from lack of creativity but most importantly they often lack a central product vision where someone can say “no”. What happens usually is some middle tier exec (or big name customer if B2B) will say, “hey did you see Snapchat new stories feature? We should do something like that” and then without careful customer research, or a product leader connecting it to an overarching vision, the devs just start work on it and it rolls out because it’s just there. Everyone needs something to do and everyone loves new features right? Blindly copying some other company’s new features or UI patterns, and pigeonholing it into an app without cohesive product-wide strategy (aka connecting it to what customers already like about your service but even better) is always the sign the company has entered mediocrity. Largely a talent issue and execs who don’t really care about long term product dev. People just looking at generic growth charts and hoping they go up and then buying other companies when their own teams can’t hack it, hoping they can seed some life, without fixing the root causes.
nonethewiser 3y ago
> Um, no, people who play WoW already play WoW, and you are really trying to convince everyone who doesn't want to play WoW to play a game that is designed to be very similar. Is that really the goal though? You can have a successful MMO without killing wow. Warhammer Online, Guild Wars 2, etc. were all great games from the business perspective.
- hoorayimhelping 3y ago
  >Warhammer Online, Guild Wars 2, etc. were all great games from the business perspective. OP said: >all these mmos were popping up saying they were the "WoW killer" Guild Wars and WHO weren't positioned as WoW killers. They were positioned as WoW alternatives that prioritized or PvP or had an endgame that revolved around PvP. Which is probably why they did well - they offered something that WoW wasn't good at instead of trying to eat WoW's lunch.

thomasahle 3y ago

> It's interesting everything trying to be TikTok. As a user, if I wanted TikTok i'd use TikTok. I don't want TikTok, so I don't use TikTok. > ... > It's sad when every tech company tries to replicate another companies features ditching the very thing which their users originally joined them for. I wonder if we might give this a name like "tradegy of the social networks". It's easy to see how a company, like Meta/Instagram can choose between keeping their own smaller market, or taking half the tiktok market by transforming their app to reels. They can't do both, as nobody would install a new app. For the users this suck, as the total market is now smaller, meaning less choice and diversity.

cshimmin 3y ago
Tragedy of the socials
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  Tragedy of the socialites? Tragedy of the socialite capitalism?
  - thomasahle 3y ago
    You are right, it probably generalizes to other industries as well. Say you have a shop and brand that sells chocolate cake; but a competitor appears that sells ice cream, and their market turns out to be 10 times bigger than yours. You could try to make a new shop, selling ice cream, but the lack of brand awareness might make it never take off. So instead you turn your chocolate cake shop into an ice cream shop, and use your existing customer awareness to catapult you into taking half that market. Good for you, since you now have half of a 10 times bigger market. Bad for the customers, since they now lose the choice between cake and ice cream. Ok, maybe the part about "using your existing brand" is where social networks are a bit different from other industries. There are hundreds of companies that could create a good social network, but the hard part is getting a big enough user base going. Probably this is less of an issue in the cake industry.
Semaphor 3y ago

pixel3234 3y ago

> I wanted TikTok i'd use TikTok You want some experience, but then you describe how Youtube is forcing you to click through shorts and BS as that. I think power users should give up on direct interaction with internet. With youtube you can have a scripts that download videosm, and filter out shorts, ads and other garbage. With news you can just print everything on laser printer... Spotify should be exported as bunch of MP3 files... It is very easy to hire some English speaking assistant in India or Philippines, or have cron jobs that does tedious work for you. I think today, if you see ad on web, or you are directly exposed to some shifty behavior like Reddit does, it is major red flag for your lifestyle. Like when you live in an apartment without proper ventilation or with toxic fumes.

zuppy 3y ago
i (at least), as a power user, don't want to work for every small thing in my life. my free time gets spent on hobbies and friends, not on fixing the broken web. if i can use those tools with low friction, i will, if not, i will stop doing it entirely.
visarga 3y ago
> It is very easy to hire some English speaking assistant in India or Philippines, or have cron jobs that does tedious work for you. Mate, can I interest you in a bit of GPT? We got 3.5 and 4, good shit, you don't need to hire someone. The newsfeed is not a critical task, AI will suffice.
- tjoff 3y ago
  GPT isn't nearly powerful enough for that.
- cityhall 3y ago
  The solution to social media companies behaving badly once they have users locked in may not be to lock yourself into another unprofitable company's closed ecosystem that's temporarily free.
cshimmin 3y ago

smole 3y ago

It’s how they’ve been taught to attract younger users. Cool new video app work to attract teens, we buy cool new video app. There’s a relationship between how social- or video-centric an app is and how well short form video fits into their mix. You can’t shoehorn it in. Not least if you feel obliged to because you paid some ludicrous sum to tout the name. For example, short form video feels ass-y on Reddit. It feels okay on YouTube, even if you don’t engage with it.

WeylandYutani 3y ago

They're just preparing for the inevitability of the US banning TikTok. And to nobody's surprise US tech will be primed to offer their TikTok clone.

rchaud 3y ago
Reddit cannot even deliver video properly on its own app, if TT is banned, there are at least 3 other apps that will crush it from a video standpoint.

damnesian 3y ago

It's roughly analogous to a tire company producing a lemon of a tire that needs constant repairs, then acquiring a chain of repair shops, Revenues are up, engagement with brand are high. The company seizes on those metrics, refusing to acknowledge the downside: the tires are bad products, which could easily tarnish the long term reputation of the company. But who cares? They have a steady trickle of income from their customers. It's a gamble, but lucrative in the short term. Short term thinking makes money, but dooms the brand to an uncertain future.

ajot 3y ago

The old Hotelling's two shops next to each other in the middle of the main street. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law

sheepybloke 3y ago

I only use Spotify for music, and recently, my homepage was all podcasts and audiobooks, with only 1 or 2 lines of recommendation for music. Spotify, please stop! You’re literally turning your homepage into something that is unusable for me!

jtbayly 3y ago
This is one of the main reasons why I canceled my Spotify subscription.

dabluecaboose 3y ago

>Not shorts but similar is I used Spotify for many years then it started forcing Podcasts on me as Podcasts where the hot thing. On my homepage where I had music which was relevant to me I had to hunt around to find my music as my homepage was full of podcasts I had no interest in so eventually cancelled my membership. Back when I got my car, I installed an Android Auto head unit and justified a Spotify subscription because I could easily navigate the AA app and play any music I wanted. I had a major breakpoint one day driving home from work, and there was *no* music on my main page anywhere. I had to scroll 3 full pages down to get past all the podcasts they were trying to get me to listen to. After that I just canceled my sub and went back to buying/downloading my music, 2007-style.