
Facebook Has Got an Instagram Problem - imartin2k
https://musicindustryblog.wordpress.com/2018/02/01/facebook-has-got-an-instagram-problem/
======
jlmorton
> Messaging apps are the third phase of platforms on which digital audiences
> congregate. First came websites, then social networks and now messaging
> apps—which collectively accounted for 7.7 billion monthly active users
> (MAUs) at the end of 2017, up from 6.6 billion in 2016 and 5.5 billion in
> 2015. This is a massive segment that continues to grow at pace.

That's a pretty misleading claim. I guess I sort of understand what's being
expressed here, but it feels weird to just add up every platform's monthly
active users and come up with a number larger than the population of the
Earth.

~~~
vanderZwan
Also, chat programs are older than social networks. You could even say it's
the only application with direct lineage to using a phone as a _phone_ (and
let's not forget about texting).

So how can they be the _third_ phase after regular websites and then social
networks?

~~~
hkmurakami
Somewhere ICQ is rolling in its grave.

~~~
paulie_a
Facebook has a messaging app problem, same as Google. Between those two
companies they must have a dozen shitty apps, when icq solved that problem
10-15 years ago.

I still remember my icq number: 5588776

~~~
chime
If you remember your password, you can still log into it at
[https://web.icq.com/](https://web.icq.com/)

~~~
jackmodern
totally logged into my account for the first time in like 16-17 years. can't
believe the service is still up and running, and that I haven't changed my
default password since then... lol

73117649 :D

------
bognition
Honestly with all the changes to Instagram I find myself using the app less
and less. The changes I'm thinking about are ads in the feed and random
content to drive engagement.

Both of these things are driving me to use the app less.

I'm realizing that Facebook does two things builds a social network and then
strip mines it off all value.

~~~
zwily
For some reason I have never seen an ad in Instagram. (And yes, I do use
it...)

~~~
eat_veggies
I see ads on Instagram all the time. Just scrolling through two days of my
feed (but it's hard to tell, because it's not chronological anymore), I see
some ads from therealcost, xbox, lovepop cards, kelloggs frosted flakes, m&m's
chocolate, some music festival, instagram itself, and six posts from accounts
I don't follow, as part of its new 'Recommended for You' (aka garbage I don't
care to see) sections. Perhaps I fit their demographics, so I get more of
them.

------
niftich
The title doesn't match the article's content: the content primarily notes
that Facebook's own messaging apps Messenger, WhatsApp, and seemingly, in the
article's interpretation, Instagram-as-a-messaging app are siphoning screen-
time away from Facebook itself, but Instagram is the least likely to present
an a true threat.

After all, Instagram lends itself well to high-margin brand advertising,
interest-based advertising, and hyperlocal content. It's hardly a problem that
certain demographics spend less time on Facebook and go on Instagram instead,
especially if these demographics are quite valuable on their own.

Even the article admits that the more traditional messaging networks like
Messenger and WhatsApp are harder to monetize. They have had some experiments
the past [1] but with so many competitors, user resistance is a risk.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13489098#13489554](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13489098#13489554)

------
ulfw
Facebook doesn't just have a Whatsapp and Instagram "problem". They have a
core Facebook problem.

The Facebook app and websites have barely innovated in years and the changes
they HAVE made have slowly but steadily eroded the core user experience. What
was once a SOCIAL NETWORK - a place where friends could come together or new
friendships were made - has become a disjointed "news" feed full of gossip,
fake news, Russian propaganda or US politics division. All this interspersed
with cat pics and buzzfeed top ups.

It's hard to find and enjoy the 'social' aspect of this social network if it's
full of oddly unedited "news" footage.

~~~
jjaredsimpson
10 years ago I would routinely go to facebook and see friends saying what they
were planning to do and make plans with them. Facebook served a real purpose
in college (we got it my junior year iirc).

Now its nearly all trash. People bitching, posting memes, sharing slideshows,
etc. The only thing I go there for is 1 specific local group and even that is
pointless because there is a discord.

Facebook is essentially dead to me, and certainly dead to all my younger
cousins 15-19 yos. I feel like I must be missing something, because I have no
idea why anyone would visit. It's so negative and low quality.

~~~
BurningFrog
Same here. Though I have no way of disambiguating what is FB changing and what
is me and my friends getting 10 years older.

~~~
rando444
I think it's just something that happens with growth. At first it's a small
group and it's cool, then your group gets larger, it's still cool, but now
more to manage.. then at some point the group gets so large that unless you're
trying to push something, there's often very little that you want to say to
your 3rd grade teacher, some guy you met on a bus, your old roommate from ten
years ago, your boss, and your grandparents all at the same time.

~~~
jinushaun
I disagree. There were very specific product changes Facebook made a while
back that fundamentally changed the experience of using Facebook. It was all
related to Facebook trying to clone Twitter: public posts by default, emphasis
on news articles, emphasis on paid content, deprecation of events, deprecation
of groups, and deprecation of photos.

With the implosion of Twitter, Facebook has since undone a lot of these
changes, but the damage had already been done. People had already learned to
stop going to Facebook to be social.

~~~
saurik
I don't remember them deprecating events (though I'd believe it), and I
definitely don't remember them deprecating photos (like, that one I am having
a hard time even conceptualizing, given how awkwardly core Photos has been to
Facebook feature set for as long as I've been using it, which has been a very
very long time now). Can you provide more context for this?

------
mromanuk
> When the sector first started emerging, Facebook could have battened down
> the hatches and played a defensive hand. Instead, it did what the bravest
> companies do: it decided to disrupt itself before the competition did.

Yes, buying all the competition.

------
stctgion
Ultimately it is really quite hard to monetize a platform that is so easy to
implement with so little product differentiation. People use messaging for
messaging. I don't care if you have better emojis. I will certainly leave if
you show me adverts. If it really turns out that most people only want simple
messaging apps then maybe there isn't that much money in it. Maybe that's ok.

~~~
aembleton
The problem is that there is something of a network effect at play. It might
be okay between a couple of people but I'm in some group chats on Whatsapp and
Messenger and it would be difficult to move away from those as you'd have to
get buy in from everyone in the group.

------
deanclatworthy
Messenger apps, more than anything are screaming out for decentralisation. I'm
not sure what the solution is - none of the major clients operate outside of a
centralised model yet - and it's incredibly difficult to counteract the hive
effect when it comes to these kinds of services.

Messenger apps are also inherently highly personal. It's your primary means of
communication in the digital age. The idea of ads being injected into that
experience appalls me.

~~~
mercer
I've posted a link earlier about 'Scuttlebutt' (and the actual client on top
of it, Patchwork), which is kind of a decentralized Facebook.

It's main innovation, as far as I can tell, is that it uses the real world as
a model for its approach. Your content spreads as 'gossip', peer to peer (over
LAN/wifi), but also propagates through 'pubs' that are internet-accessible.

What first made me interested is that the Patchwork client is quite user-
friendly and I've noticed that the relatively small group of current users are
_not_ all tech-savvy. That's something of an achievement. Furthermore, some
other options I've looked into strike me as either unrealistically
decentralized, or too (pragmatically?) centralized.

Anyways, even as just as a look into how thing could work different I can
highly recommend checking out these types of alternatives!

~~~
msangi
This is an extremely interesting project, but when I logged in I found it
difficult to find someone to interact with.

It might be that I joined a pub with very little traffic, I haven't spent much
time on it and I plan to have another look when I have some free time.

~~~
mercer
You might have to poke around the channels and, more importantly, follow
people that you find interesting. That should liven things up a bit.

That said, I suppose the whole thing is inherently quieter than something like
Facebook or a forum because it's decentralized and, of course, still a small
community at this point. And quite possibly the whole point is not to be as
busy as other social platforms :).

~~~
msangi
Thanks for the advice, following people made it much more interesting.

I also started to appreciate what's the price for decentralization: after
following just a couple of users I already have several hundreds megabytes
downloaded.

------
strebler
I didn't quite understand, what is the problem with Instagram? It's too
popular? Or just that it's not dropping in popularity vs Facebook (due to
their recent adjustments)?

I wouldn't consider Instagram to be a messaging app - in fact they're spinning
off another app from Instagram just to do messaging (because it's not exactly
great at that).

It sounds to me more like Facebook might have some problem and Instagram is
just doing it's own thing (as are Facebook's other services).

~~~
vanilla_nut
Somehow I completely missed the news about the standalone Instagram messaging
app (called Direct, for anybody interested). Looks like I should jump ship
just like I did with Facebook before it's too late.

------
gaius
_But, the problem with messaging apps is that no one has really worked out how
to monetise them yet_

Not sure this is true; back in the day BlackBerry used to be the combo of the
handset + backend services provided by RIM, including BBM, which they charged
a fiver a month for and people didn’t mind paying it. If RIM had been willing
to take the risk of extending BBM to other devices (sooner and better) perhaps
the whole world would be paying them a vig now.

Apple’s iMessage is arguably monetised in advance by hardware sales, and I’ve
only recently learned does group chat too.

------
sidcool
Humanity has a Facebook problem. But it's not just Facebook at fault.
Overconsumption is humanity's trait.

------
praulv
I always think of it like this: if Google fell apart, the world as we know
would change if. If twitter/facebook fell apart, my day to day life would not
change in any way.

~~~
kisstheblade
I have played the same mind game. Literally nothing would change for me if
facebook/twitter/instagram/snapchat ceased to exist now. Whatsapp I use but
with friends who I have other contact info, like a phone number... Google on
the other hand is immensely useful.

It still amazes me that there are so many billions of advertising dollars to
prop up something as useless as facebook and their snowflake-innovator-genius
engineers with over 100k salaries.

~~~
RestlessMind
Then probably you haven't understood one of the biggest user needs - people
don't want to "be bored". They constantly want some entertainment as stimulus.

Look at people around you (grocery checkout lines or bus stop or subway or
Starbucks) - everyone is glued to their phone screens. And Facebook is the
ultimate magnet to waste those 2-5 min wait times one has to endure every so
often. Earlier, people would get bored waiting in line, or strike
conversations with strangers or just muse over random thoughts. No more. All
that attention has gone to their smartphones.

And advertisers are simply following those eyeballs. Since Facebook manages to
capture so much attention of so many humans, they rake in billions.

------
te_chris
They’ve put ads in my fb messenger and damn them to hell for it. I’ve actively
stopped using it now.

~~~
petepete
It's the way they broke the mobile web messaging experience that bothered me.
Even if I turn on desktop mode the input box deletes the last word when I
press space.

It used to be fine, minimal and functional. I won't install any fb app, I just
want to use it on the web.

~~~
mgkimsal
> I won't install any fb app, I just want to use it on the web.

FB app on ipad disallows pinch/zoom. You better be damn happy with the font
sizes they dictate. Or you could stick with the web version.

------
drdrey
> For video, expect the messaging apps to start acting as virtual TV
> programming guides and remote controls for what will likely be a semi-
> scheduled ad supported and premium video offering.

wat

------
Asdfbla
It's really unfortunate that Facebook was allowed to buy WhatsApp. This could
have been good news, and maybe it still is since end-to-end encrypted
messaging apps may not enable the same data abuse as Facebook's social
network. Still would have been nicer if it was a separate entity.

Also, pretty insane Instagram numbers. Now that is a service I really don't
get, yet considering how many people use it, it can't just be being too old.

~~~
jinushaun
Instagram is Facebook where the news feed is only photos. People want that.
People also wanted that out of Facebook, but Facebook became the unsocial
network when it tried to clone Twitter so everyone flocked to Instagram to be
social again.

And also, there are insanely good professional photographers on Instagram and
some people just like looking at pretty photos instead of thumbnails grabbed
from political news articles.

------
alkonaut
Out of curiosity, how much infrastructure goes into making a messaging app?

My gut feeling is that you can run a messaging app for a million users on the
same infrastructure you would use to run Facebook for 1000 users. So having a
messenger app with a ton of users and no monetization is bad, but not _that_
expensive?

~~~
empath75
Near the end, AIM was run by a handful of people at aol and maybe 100 servers
in a datacenter at the most.

------
dustinmoris
You know Facebook has a problem when a social network has become anti social.

All I see on Facebook is friends of friends fighting over politics with other
friends of friends, fake news, stupid animal pics, people with low self esteem
hunting for the likes, stupid mainstream commentary, "look at me how awesome I
am" status updates, rants where everyone feels to be treated unfairly by the
world because of [insert the single characteristic about yourself where you
can pretend to be discriminated], etc.

I only go to Facebook for one reason now, to check that I'm not missing a
birthday of some close extended family. This takes me about 1 minute every day
and then I don't visit FB for another 24 hours.

