
Instagram daily use surpasses Snapchat - rahulshiv
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/02/instagram-stories-anniversary/
======
meathook
What do people think about "minutes per day" as a metric for success?

I think it represents a fundamental misalignment of goals between users and
the company. By this metric, the more of your waking life that can be taken,
the better.

~~~
dvt
I don't get it. It's not like users are _forced_ to use these applications. If
users like Instagram more than Snapchat, they're bound to use it longer (which
the article seems to imply). Hence, the metric.

~~~
laser
If Google intentionally slowed its search results by 10%, would people not
spend more time on the site? Perhaps even to the tune of 10%? But would people
suddenly love Google 10% more?

As a more explicit example, Facebook used to allow you to type a friend's name
into the search bar on desktop, and a card would come down (with other
possible people too you could select/down-arrow to) so when you hit enter you
would go straight to that friend's page. Now, all search queries take you to a
search page, where you can then click on your friend's name. That extra page
load and click multiplied a few times a day probably keeps me on Facebook an
extra minute or so every day, which I'm sure was used during the feature
testing to justify its greatness. Instead, it noticeably and nearly daily
negatively impacts my life.

~~~
jgtrosh
Just a small reaction to your premise that slower search results would lead to
more time spent on site:

>
> [https://doi.org/10.1145/2600428.2609627](https://doi.org/10.1145/2600428.2609627)

> Impact of Response Latency on User Behavior in Web Search

> Query response latency. :

> In [18], the authors exposed a commercial search engine’s users to response
> time delays of varying magnitude and observed the impact of different levels
> of delay on users’ long-term search behavior. They observed that the users
> who were exposed to higher time delays issued fewer queries than they
> usually do. Interestingly, the effects were shown to be persistent in the
> long-term even after the response latency had returned to the original
> levels.

I think that to increase user time on their website, search providers do well
to try and improve search result latency.

~~~
laser
Thanks, in the back of my mind I thought this might not be the best example,
as I vaguely remembered reading a similar study from Facebook where slowing
their users pages down resulted in less time spent on the site. I think the
second example holds more clearly, though, and the general point that keeping
users on your site longer doesn't mean you're actually adding additional value
to their life.

------
nv-vn
The whole point of Snapchat is that it's not about sitting down, taking a high
quality photo, editing it, etc. It's a messaging app meant for quick replies.
You send someone something and they reply back. That's fundamentally different
from Instagram's model of user interaction. It's like comparing time spent in
iMessage to time spent on YouTube: it doesn't make sense.

~~~
alaskamiller
Nope.

Now the point of snapchat is to binge watch videos of other people.

Snapchat sells ads the same way the media company does. So their KPI is time
spent, like how a broadcast company determines ad rates.

Their strategy is to detach the accountability of clicks or performance.

You spend six figures with Snap to impress your brands to the same demo (Gen
Z) that used to tune in to MTV (Gen X) and Youtube (Gen Y).

As such, here Instagram is following suit. Vertical scrolling is just manual
scrubbing.

~~~
pygy_
> ... (Gen Z) ... (Gen X) ... (Gen Y) ...

Did we just run out of letters to describe generations?

~~~
acheron
Gen AA is coming soon.

------
hahahsnap
Metrics exposed by instagram is a pure scam aka growth hacking by fb engineers
as their comp is aligned towards that.

Snapchat: Stories are not autoplay. You touch and see the story you're
interested in and the view closes. You have to scroll and open another story.

Instagram: Stories are autoplay. You click once and it's a slideshow. So you
can assume metric here are orders of magnitude higher than what it should be.

Snapchat: Story introduced a new revenue source without affecting bottomline.

Instagram: Stories at the top of the app is a very bad user experience. If an
users spends more time in story, he spends less time in scrolling instagram
feed. (Nobody in Instagram wants to talk about that).

Snapchat: People post whenever they feel like posting. Instagram: People post
when they feel something is of very high quality.

Snapchat: Doesn't want to grow the number of users as it doesn't matter to
company's revenue. FB makes 75-80% of revenue with just it's 10-20% of users
which snapchat already own.

~~~
yellow_postit
Why would Snap not want to grow the number of users?

~~~
vit05
Apparently, Evan Spiegel has said they do not want to expand to poor countries
like India and Spain. And he doesn't care so much about the Android version.

[http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/snapchat-evan-spiegel-
only-...](http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/snapchat-evan-spiegel-only-for-
rich-people-anthony-pompliano-1202028526/)

~~~
malloryerik
Spain qualifies as a poor country? Damn...

~~~
godzillabrennus
The amazing part of Spain being a poor country is that all Arab countries
combined have a lower GDP than Spain.

The Bay Area has a larger GDP than the country of Mexico.

~~~
adventured
> The amazing part of Spain being a poor country is that all Arab countries
> combined have a lower GDP than Spain.

That's not true.

Spain: $1.23 trillion

Saudi Arabia: $639b, UAE: $371b, Egypt: $332b

Those three combined are larger than Spain's economy.

Then you also have Iraq: $167b, Algeria: $160b Qatar: $156b, Morocco: $103b,
Sudan $94b, etc.

------
klondike_
This isn't exactly surprising. Snapchat is a messaging application, and
Instagram is a messaging and picture sharing platform. Obviously users would
spend more time browsing images on Insagram than just shooting off some
messages to friends in Snapchat.

~~~
baddox
True, but I doubt Snapchat the company is fine with being "just a messaging
application" that unsurprisingly gets used less per day than a key competitor.

~~~
trhaynes
Snapchat does have Discover, with "snap stories" from news sites and even
stuff they curate themselves.

[https://support.snapchat.com/en-US/article/discover-how-
to](https://support.snapchat.com/en-US/article/discover-how-to)

~~~
toomuchtodo
> with "snap stories" from news sites and even stuff they curate themselves.

That has to be even more depressing if Instagram users are still using the IG
app more with the effort SNAP is putting into the content.

~~~
k-mcgrady
The problem is that Snapchat Discover is totally bollocks. I'm a mid-20's guy
and 90% of the content I see in it is either about the Kardashians or stuff
like '10 things you totally hate about your bra'. There is absolutely zero
targeting of that content and unfortunately it's not even neutral 'everyone
will like this' content. It's 90% for teenage girls.

~~~
nrhk
Difficult to target when you have no user data and your app fundamental can't
integrate it in. They're counting on SnapMaps to be their savior in terms of
advertising data.

I see Discover turning into a fix of local discovery options and general
nationally curated stories

------
kul
FB are the best at creating and controlling the narrative. Since the start.
They'll push out numbers that always favor them.

~~~
seppin
when you own all market share it's not hard to "push out numbers" that are
favorable.

------
NemesisOfNo
My celebrity and personal Snapchat stories have started dwindling. My stories
are about 1/3-1/4 of what they were six months ago.

When I post to Snapchat, I used to get several dozen views from friends. Now
I'm lucky if I get ten.

Snapchat just needs to allow you find and add friends more easily. That's
what's holding them back.

~~~
hahahsnap
>>> Snapchat just needs to allow you find and add friends more easily. That's
what's holding them back.

Not really. There is a balance which needs to be achieved. I have around > 500
friends in Facebook/Instagram but i don't really care much about what he/she
shared every day.

Having lots of people makes the social media experience better in first few
years but not long-term.

------
packetized
I'll be concerned about $SNAP when Instagram is used in lieu of texting.

~~~
mcintyre1994
I wonder how Snapchat's messaging metrics compare to Facebook Messenger and
WhatsApp - if I had to guess, both easily squash Snapchat.

~~~
kfriede
Probably very highly dependent on which age group. Pre-teens/teens? Snapchat.
20's? Messenger. 30+? Messenger and WhatsApp.

------
Rjevski
An app with a decent UX surpasses a shitty one with dreadful UX - who would've
thought?

~~~
izacus
Yeah - I think everyone here just ignores how dreadful the Snapchat app is on
Android phones. It's so dreadful that even non-techy users which usually don't
care about app quality jumped ship from Snapchat to Instagram. A lot of iPhone
users followed because that's where the content is now.

~~~
Rjevski
Even on iPhone it's dreadful now. I miss the first few versions of Snapchat
when it launched. An UI that at least kinda made sense, no stories nor
"discover" garbage, and the list of everyone's top 3 "best friends" was cool.

------
astrostl
I really can't get over how poor I find Snapchat's UI/UX to be, and I don't
_think_ it's because I'm old. But I second-guess it.

~~~
slackoverflower
Snapchat is very easy and intuitive to use. I'll never understand people
saying they can't use the app. Also every US college student right now uses
Snapchat for all communication. FB should be scared

~~~
astrostl
Hidden information is the definition of unintuitive. "Easy once you get the
hang of it" is the definition of unintuitive.

Snapchat has six main screens: home, west, north, south, east, and east-east.
There is no indication that this is true, it has to be (randomly) discovered
or taught. That it is easy to swipe left or right, or to remember that the up
screen is your profile, has nothing to do with whether or not something is
intuitive. Intuitive would be this being obvious.

Touching an app icon to open it is intuitive and easy. Force-touching a
keyboard display to open up a cursor slider is easy, but not intuitive.

------
Markoff
i feel old (in 30s) when i have problem to distinguish these two services, do
I remember correctly that Instagram is just some photo albums for food (not
sure what's difference from Google photos) and Snapchat is some chat with
stickers for teenagers?

I don't use Twitter, Facebook or pretty much any social media (besides Reddit
and HN) and I don't feel like i am missing on something.

------
yalogin
At first glance I thought snap had more users than Instagram and that
surprised me a lot. If it’s just the amount time users are using the app, I
don’t know it should be that surprising if Instagram cloned snap’s feature.
Unfortunately for Snap FB has a lot bigger pockets than them and so it’s
unlikely they will ever relent.

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visarga
> What happens, for example, if we recreate the structure of the brain on a
> computer by interacting silicon chips where you had interacting neurons?
> Would it be missing anything that’s missing in the mind? I’d like to think
> that a computer could be conscious. I don't think consciousness is reducible
> to a pattern of interactions in the brain, but I do think that if one
> reproduces that pattern of interactions in fine enough detail, one will
> reproduce consciousness.

Perfectly said. Consciousness is not reducible to a pattern of interaction in
the brain because it's a system of brain+world that creates consciousness. The
brain learns from the world first, only later it is capable of independent
imagination and thinking. A brain never connected to the world would not be
conscious. An AI connected to the world (or a simulation) could be conscious
of the world it exists in, and of its own existence there.

------
eosophos
I do not understand the hype about Snapchat... Doesn't IG do everything and
more?

~~~
kfriede
Now, yes. Snapchat was first to market (between the two) with expiring photos
and stories.

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tedmiston
> If Facebook’s goal was stop Snap in its tracks, it’s largely succeeded with
> Instagram Stories. Snapchat’s monthly active user growth rate has plummeted
> from 17.2% per quarter to just 5%...

Does HN think that these two events are even related?

From my experience, the content I get via Instagram Stories is mostly from
people I don't know but follow whereas Snapchat is still where most of the
interactions with my friends happens. The products have similar features but
the audience, especially being public-facing, is totally different in my
experience.

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loveass
there's more ass on instagram, that's why. snapchat needs ass

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sreejithr
No shit, Sherlock!

