
Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook - DiabloD3
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/technology/why-instagram-is-becoming-facebooks-next-facebook.html
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victorvation
> More precisely, it feels the way Facebook did from 2009 to 2012, when it
> silently crossed over from one of those tech things that some people
> sometimes did to one of those tech things that everyone you know does every
> day.

Ubiquity is an interesting thought - there are very few apps that an average
person uses on a daily basis that _aren't_ owned by Facebook. Four of the most
used apps (Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp) are owned by the same
parent company.

In China, we see an analogous example - to an even greater extent - WeChat is
practically the de facto mobile OS. Where do we go from here? Hardware? WeChat
seems most likely to do this, from my perspective. What happens when Tencent
acquires Xiaomi and creates WeChatOS phones? What happens when Facebook does
similar and Mark Zuckerberg controls nearly every waking moment of most
Americans? Who is the Apple to the United States v. Facebook monopoly?

~~~
ams6110
Judging by my kids and their friends, teens and younger are not using Facebook
apps, they are using Snapchat.

~~~
nojvek
I know a ton of Users who are not on Facebook. Yeah Facebook had a ton of
users, I'm not sure how many of them are real and how engaged Facebook keeps
them.

So many ads you can slap in someone's face before they get put off.

~~~
bradknowles
Lots and lots of fake accounts, especially to play certain games, or set up as
bots for other purpose.

When I was active on Facebook, most people I knew had dozens of fake accounts.

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ronhav3
I've been on Instagram for a year, and I still don't get it.

I've gotten to a 1000 followers by regularly adding photos from my travels. I
get a few hundred likes per photo and a couple of dozen of generic
comments.And the occasional DM. Is this it ? Even by the standards of social
media, it feels very superificial to me.

Facebook 10 years ago was much more exciting.

~~~
psyc
I don't get it either. I can only assume it's either a generational thing, or
me not understanding things most people like. I've gone back, looked at, and
tried to understand it several times, and I just can't see why I'd want to
look at it or use it.

"I want everybody to see this photo I took"

"Cheers, I have seen your photo"

I guess that's extremely compelling to folks.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
"I want everyone to read this comment I wrote."

"Cheers, I have read your comment."

~~~
psyc
That illustrates what I'm getting at, because I can't see the similarity. When
I read a comment, I can become informed about something or be challenged. When
I see someone's photo of just about anything ... that's where I draw a blank.
It would be a different story perhaps if I took the time to curate a follow-
list that was all computer graphicists and mathematicians, but that's what I
use Twitter for.

~~~
cmehdy
Building a list of interesting people to follow is the biggest part. Keep in
mind that this is visual communication, so there will definitely be a bias
towards photographers, artists, journalists.. Not everyone is able to
communicate visually well either, and the format prevents long textual
explanations and favours a more emotional response.

National Geographic has a few accounts (natgeo, natgeocreative..), NASA shares
interesting tidbits about current missions, Magnum photography has interesting
pieces of visual journalism, many unknown journalists use it to explore
projects that do not always resonate with current trends in the media/their
workplace.. There's decent content on Instagram, although it isn't easy to
find.

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l33tbro
It's disappointing that tech journalists don't go a bit harder at the founders
when writing pieces like these. Sure, it's interesting to find out about
Instagram's internal processes and their projections, but Facebook is becoming
increasingly regarded as being the main contributor to a new kind of social
malaise. Therefore, if Instagram is aspiring to that level of adoption, how
can questions like this not be put to the founders?

Maybe it's just me, but for once I'd love to see a journalist be a bit more
frank with these siloed cyber-utopionists and ask some hard questions about
what social value they're actually creating - rather than chewing over sign-up
metrics and scaling strategies. Anecdotally, I've never seen one interview
with Zuckerberg where a journalist actually calls him out on his "we're just
connecting people" poppycock.

~~~
ismail
I attended a conference where a speaker was someone from FB. One of the slides
that stood out for me was a pic of 3 teens sitting in the most picturesque
environment on a picnic blanket. All of them with their noses stuck in phones.

This is what FB and instagram is about, getting you on the mouse wheel of
usage so they can sell your attention.

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ohstopitu
and is that so bad? As in, this is like how our parents used to say "you are
glued to the TV" and that's exactly what TV channels wanted...to sell your
attention.

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ruminasean
Well sure, but eventually you'd get kicked out of the house and have to go
outside, away from TV. Now TV is in your pocket, wherever you go. They can
kick today's kids out of the house, they go to the nearest spot out of sight
and....watch ads all day.

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whywhywhywhy
Remember when people kept claiming Facebook buying Instagram wasn't a bad
thing because "they're not ruining it" "They're just leaving it as the same
old Instagram".

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IBM
Uh that's what they've done. The article is about Instagram becoming like
Facebook in the sense that this is a massive property on the scale of the core
Facebook product. 700 million users vs Facebook's 2 billion.

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mtrpcic
Facebook has definitely not left it as the "same old Instagram". They've
changed the home feed algorithm to basically the same as the Facebook home
feed algorithm, and there's been a lot of content creators negatively impacted
by it (I know this because of the industry my wife works in, which is having
major issues now, where engagement has basically halved among anybody except
the top maybe 5% of content creators).

~~~
BinaryIdiot
So here's the thing: Facebook said they'd leave Instagram to be Instagram. But
saying Facebook isn't holding that promise because things have changed isn't
necessarily accurate.

The people in charge of Instagram may have used more and more of Facebook's
tools, looked at better analytics, tweaked, used lessons learned from
Facebook, etc.

While I agree it's unlikely that Facebook left them entirely alone I don't
think it's necessarily fair to say they meddled just because things have
changed. Nothing stays the same especially in the tech industry.

~~~
kalleboo
Not to mention that Twitter is moving in the same direction

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majewsky
In 5 years we have the short-message Facebook (Twitter), the image Facebook
(Instagram), the news Facebook (Facebook), the video Facebook (Youtube), maybe
also the source code Facebook (Github [1]). That must be the market-driven
diversity that my economics teachers loved to tell me all about.

[1] That one is a bit of a stretch, but you can already "follow people" and
they market themselves as a social network, so...

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bamboozled
I wonder how many users are actually aware that Instagram is owned by Facebook
and then think about what that knowledge would do to public opinion and
uptake.

A portion of users enjoy using Instagram because they consider it a FB
"alternative", and that they're privacy is at less risk by diversifying social
media platforms.

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tabeth
What exactly is the end goal of these advertising platforms, exactly?

Ads in my mind are zero sum, so I'm pretty clueless on this front.

One thing I find interesting is the simultaneous popularity of these newfound
distractions and task/project management software. Are we solving problems
that were intentionally created and calling that progress?

~~~
immad
Ads over time extract profit margins from all other industries. For example at
least 50% of all profits from mobile games are spent on acquiring users from
ads.

~~~
mattbettinson
Do you have a source on that? I'm not challenging, I believe it, I just wanna
see some proof

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Denzel
Maybe this will do it for you:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-03/advertisi...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-03/advertisings-
century-of-flat-line-growth). Ad spend as a % of U.S. GDP remains relatively
constant since the 1920s.

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pmarreck
There are things out there, great things, just struggling to be the next
whatever. There should be a way to look past the eclipse of Google, Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.

~~~
jacksnipe
I'm pretty sure Snapchat already was the next whatever

~~~
rhizome
Is it still?

~~~
freyir
No, it's the previous next whatever now.

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olivermarks
I immediately thought of this Stratechery post when reading the NYT piece.
[https://stratechery.com/2017/facebook-and-the-cost-of-
monopo...](https://stratechery.com/2017/facebook-and-the-cost-of-monopoly/) At
least the NYT photo of Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger is hilarious, the rest
of piece as others have noted the usual softballs to our technology
overlords...

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harel
Conversation (snippet) with my 20 year old cousin went like this:

Me: are you on Facebook? Cousin: no, it's for old people. I'm on instagram.

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lapsock
right? It doesn't even make sense for him to say that. two completely
different platforms. facebook is about people and instagram is about pictures.

~~~
MisterBastahrd
Facebook is (generally speaking) for people in their mid 20s and up who have
become adults. Instagram is for artsy people who share photos, but is
primarily used by teens - early 20s.

But Facebook is a good enough platform, so why? Teens will always seek out
places where they can be their usual obnoxious selves without the prying eyes
of judgmental adults. Instagram isn't the destination for teens, it's just a
waypoint until the Instagram users grow up, and then there'll be a new network
that everyone will flock to.

In the end, Facebook will still win. Ignoring the fact that Facebook owns
instagram, the Instagram users will get married and have kids, and they'll
want to share those moments with their parents and grandparents on Facebook.
It's still the most widely used AND most robust of the social networks.

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jansho
From both consumer and designer perspectives, Instagram is my favourite social
media. It strikes a beautiful balance overall: quick to post; very low
commitment if I choose to; a gold mine of info, inspiration and talent if you
know where to look; and even the advert model is done very well - I find
myself clicking on some, while others can be easily skipped with a scroll. And
here's the intriguing bit: I don't find myself "tied" to Instagram like I've
experienced with other social media, and neither did it cost my social life.
This is how social media should be like!

Granted, I'm biased by the virtue of being more practiced in reigning in
addiction :)

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KaoruAoiShiho
I don't understand how google is so incompetent and just left facebook this
field entirely to themselves. Why couldn't there be a Youtube Stills app for
example?

~~~
bootload
_" I don't understand how google is so incompetent and just left Facebook this
field entirely to themselves."_

@kaorduaoishiho, at it's core, google has never understood ^social^.

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techaddict009
off topic but Instagram's pre-production servers are getting indexed by
google:
[https://preprod.instagram.com/vivek.be/](https://preprod.instagram.com/vivek.be/)

~~~
kamphey
What does this mean exactly? What does preprod do that normal instagram
doesn't do?

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a_imho
I only have second hand experience with Instagram, but it feels they got
product placement right. I regularly see people asking where they could buy
the dresses/accessories/gifts featured in the photos, actively following
brands instead of blocking what ads shovel in their face.

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metehe
Im worryed of facebook and google how much they dominate the social media.
Worryed about they behavier and actions to violate privacy, modify opinions
and force they way in technology. Why people follow these violators ? Why
advertisers put money on this ?

Sorry, facebook and google are for me big no no. I can't understand why people
use these platforms. Why not to use alternatives ?

I hope people would think before using these services more.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
People use them because that's what everyone else uses. With a social network,
that's kind of the point.

And for whatever reason, most people don't care that much about the things you
listed as big dangers.

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nvalleysilico
Google has never had to buy a competitor as its revenue, scientific and
technology value is orders of magnitude greater than facebook et al. I'm
looking for the next Google not the next facebook/myspace/snapchat/instagram.

~~~
pipeep
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Alphabet)

Web search engines:

\- Outride (2001)

\- Kaltix (2003)

\- Akwan Information Technologies (2005)

\- Orion (2006)

\- Aardvark (2010)

\- PlinkArt (2010)

\- Metaweb (2010)

\- Like.com (2010)

\- Apture (2011)

Granted, none of these were very high-profile, and Google hasn't acquired any
other web search engines either, but to say "Google has never had to buy a
competitor" is naive.

They've also spent a lot of money acquiring competing companies that aren't
related to their core business. YouTube competed with Google Video before they
were acquired. DoubleClick competed with AdSense (and arguably, Google stole
DoubleClick's model). Waze competed (and still competes) with Google Maps.

Acquisitions aren't a sign of weakness.

~~~
adventured
Might as well add to that, that Google's entire core business model was
intentionally and directly swiped from GoTo.com (which they of course settled
over). $90 billion in search ad sales built on a business concept they had to
go outside of their own company for. Further deflates the parent's premise.

