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It’s a text-based app, which dramatically changes expectations. Instagram Stories was, like Instagram, photos and videos. That allows consistency in how things
by bertil 3y ago
It’s a text-based app, which dramatically changes expectations. Instagram Stories was, like Instagram, photos and videos. That allows consistency in how things work (not that it does in practice because some gestures were based on shared expectations with Facebook Stories, others with TikTok or Snapchat, but… you get it).
Facebook designers have suffered quite a bit from dealing with very inconsistent media format: comments on one photo in an album are one of the obvious ones, or a poster criticizing and sharing a video and comments assuming the author shot the video is familiar to anyone with less media-savvy friends. Limiting media forms to consistent sets makes sense to have a smoother experience.
Facebook, and later Instagram once the first one was burned, has done a lot to have a social graph that makes sense: actual people and well-established pseudonyms, famous people and brands, etc. It’s the Social part of what is known internally as “The Graph” and a very crucial asset, something that was expected to be shared across properties: Facebook and Instagram, of course (hence the horrifying confusing relation between your Facebook account with your civil name and your pseudonymous account on Instagram, outing a few people that way), but also the MetaVerse lately and yet again with some controversy. WhatsApp fought against having the Social part of the graph as a default because WA had its own graph; that was a tough battle. It’s not fully isolated: WA Shopping leverages Inventory, the Things part of the graph, massively so.
Despite all that drama, this confirms that Facebook wants to leverage its Graph further, specifically Instagram’s—likely a victory from Ad Partners who want brands to feel comfortable early and spend fast.
The spaghetti logo looks nothing like what I have on my screen, so I think it’s a good one (Instagram gradient was to avoid having to deal with Facebook’s curse of starting very distinct, to be one of the too many blue apps far too soon). The name starting with 't' could be a way to capitalize on people who search by app name and their muscle memory that the app with ranty posts is called t-something.
- geokon 3y agoDo you have any thoughts on why they attached to the IG graph and not the FB graph? Maybe I'm in a bubble, IG seems very low text, low drama, low politics. Not very Twitter-y
- bigyikes 3y agoI think the IG graph is more similar to the Twitter graph than the FB graph. Also, IG has much more of a “cool factor” which they’re hoping Threads will inherit. I follow my grandparents on FB, and I don’t necessarily want that on my Threads.
- fknorangesite 3y ago> I think the IG graph is more similar to the Twitter graph than the FB graph. Very much so: Facebook is unlike Instagram and Twitter in that its relationships are bidirectional.
- JayPalm 3y agoThis is a good point that I didn't think of until now. Bi-directional "connections" in the style of Facebook and LinkedIn feel very antiquated now.
- cowsandmilk 3y agoMy guess is that facebook’s real name policy wouldn’t go well with this product
- bertil 3y agoThere’s drama on IG, but thankfully not among the people you follow. Why? Pseudonymous accounts. They are huge on Twitter, necessary, and Instagram supports them.
- sangnoir 3y agoDoes Facebook have globally-unique user handles? Instagram seems to the the only Meta property where the handle is not PII (real name or phone number). Among Meta properties, Instagram is also the closest to Twitter as an interest-based social network (rather than limited to people-you-already-know)
- omeid2 3y agoAny unique identifier assigned to an "identifiable" person is PII. It doesn't matter if it is an IRC or Instagram handler, or a twitter username. It is PII if it can be associated to a person. Euro/GDPR: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-4-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-4-gdpr/ ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly. The keyword here is indirectly. Australia: https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2019C00025 https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2019C00025 personal information means information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable. (a) whether the information or opinion is true or not; and (b) whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not. The keyword here "reasonably identifiable".