
Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels - theBashShell
https://www.axios.com/facebook-launches-its-tiktok-rival-instagram-reels-56460094-88df-4aa5-b6a1-39695c682508.html
======
OzzyB
Quoting from the excellent blog post[1] submitted here yesterday[0] that stole
my morning workout time:

" Instagram is some strange hybrid mix of social and interest graph, and now
it’s also a jumble of formats, with a Stories feed relegated to a top bar in
the app while the more stagnant and less active original feed continues to run
vertically as the default. Messaging is pushed to a separate pane and also
served by a separate app. Longer form videos bounce you to Instagram TV, which
is just an app for videos that exceed some time limit, I guess? And soon,
perhaps commerce will be jammed in somehow? Meanwhile, they have a Discover
tab, or whatever it is called, which seems like it could be the default tab if
they wanted to take a more interest-based approach like TikTok. But they seem
to have punted on making any hard decisions for so long now that the app is
just a Frankenstein of feeds and formats and functions spread across a
somewhat confused constellation of apps. "

Let's see if they're forced to make any "hard decisions" about their bundled
UX in future...

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24049676](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24049676)

[1] [https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/8/3/tiktok-and-the-
sorti...](https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/8/3/tiktok-and-the-sorting-hat)

~~~
alehul
As an American who looks at WeChat and sees a massive, unintuitive jumbled
mess, you've explained in this comment how that could possibly be so popular
in China!

I feel foolish for not having realized that the UX must make perfect sense to
everyone who has used WeChat since the days of it being a simple communication
app.

By that logic, I'm not sure we could say quite yet that Instagram's bundling
_is_ a mistake.

~~~
echevil
WeChat has lots of things hidden behind low impression entrypoints. You can
explore them when you want. Its primary features, chat and moments, are dead
simple, like WhatsApp. Facebook on the other hand, are mixing lots of stuff
into their main feed, making the experience horrible for everyone

~~~
dmix
Marketing/business side always demand prime real-estate to push 'features'
instead of just blending them into the UI. This is extra-apparent on mobile
apps but FB did it on their website for years (I haven't seen what it looks
like recently).

It's not easy to say no as a designer but the best companies are the ones most
capable of keeping things as focused on primary UX flows as possible.

TikTok figured this out by making it all about scrolling a simple page of
high-density videos, the entire screen is full of the content you want. No
extra tapping or side scrolling needed.

Reddit is another company that missed the boat on what made their website
great during their redesign. Making it feel top-heavy JS-wise and sparser
instead of simple high-density information like newspaper site with simple
links. For ex: the first article on old.reddit.com is 100px from the top and
can fit 10 articles within 1000px, while the new one starts at 400px and lists
3-4 posts by 1000px (HN is 55px and 20+ posts).

~~~
meristem
Let’s ship features! To heck with what users may need or want!

~~~
cpach
The employees want it, management want it, the owners want it – yes,
considering user needs can sometimes be very low down on the list.

------
snowwrestler
I still cannot believe that Twitter bought Vine, couldn't figure out what to
do with it, shut it down, then had to bring it back as a read-only archive
because there was so much popular outcry.

At the time, the story was that all these other platforms like Instagram and
Snapchat were adopting short videos, so Vine could not compete anymore. But
obviously it was possible to compete, since an _entirely new service_ \--Tik
Tok--was able to rise against them.

That said, I do think there may be a human-oriented life cycle to these sorts
of social apps. Once a social platform is around long enough, it becomes the
thing that old people use (since its original users grow older with it). Then
the next round of teens seek a new platform--even if the functionality is the
same--just so they can have it to themselves.

Under this theory, there's _nothing_ Twitter could have done with Vine to make
it beat Tik Tok, since a crucial feature of Tik Tok is simply that it's new.

The business strategy in the face of this theory would be to continuously
start or buy new social platforms with similar feature sets, but each time
with a new brand that is totally separate from the (older) parent brand so
teens don't get scared off.

~~~
dilap
My take on it is Twitter just isn't, as a company, very good at making
software. This is from external observation and a couple of reports from
friends who used to work there.

~~~
dimitrios1
Yeah it really feels like IBM in the sense that it had some really amazing
engineers that built the company up, and after they left, they have just been
resting on those laurels ever sense. What have they truly innovated recently?

~~~
creddit
The division they have helped foment in the US is pretty impressive.

~~~
dimitrios1
People have been this divided for a long time. Social Media just helps exhume
it better. Started in the 50s.

~~~
mbesto
My sense is that lots of divided people (mainly fringe) have basically been
silenced for years. Twitter has made it possible for those people to have a
voice and more problematic made it super easy for malicious actors to mimic
those people's ideas to make the situation worse than it really is.

My (probably unpopular) opinion is that they simply shouldn't have a voice.
Twitter is bad for society period.

~~~
drngdds
I feel similarly. Liberal ideals would say that everyone having a global voice
is a good thing, but we haven't really seen things play out that way since
social media became so dominant. At least not in the US.

Though it doesn't help, of course, that TwitFaceTube are designed to maximize
engagement at the expense of everything else, which encourages inflammatory
content. Maybe if they didn't, we wouldn't have this problem.

------
carlosdp
> Reels' video distribution algorithm will resemble TikTok's: users will see
> the most popular videos at the moment, rather than a selection tailored to
> their individual profile.

That's not how TikTok works, the feed is really good at tailoring to the stuff
you actually like to watch. It's a big part of why it's so popular.

> Reels differs from TikTok thanks to Instagram's augmented reality effects,
> which let users overlay images and filters onto their videos.

TikTok has had AR filters for a long time now...

~~~
razster
I dislike Reel already. I follow wood working, RC cars, and metal fab/3D
printing/CNC. Now when I browse it's nothing but women jumping around and
showing off their clothes... WTH!? So I start saying, not interested to all of
that, still spams me with it.

~~~
Thorentis
Probably because that's what the majority of the content on Instagram is. It's
likely that content you enjoy hasnt been created yet.

~~~
ipsum2
That's not true, I use Instagram for checking out CNC/3d printing/robotics
projects.

~~~
three_seagrass
They meant on Reel.

------
nilkn
Reels isn’t going to compete with TikTok in any real way for a few simple
reasons.

First and foremost, as a non-Instagram user, I flat-out can’t use it. A while
back, when I was curious about TikTok, I downloaded it and was instantly
swiping through a video feed that was already getting customized for me. I
downloaded Instagram this morning and was presented with a wall to create an
account. Nope.

Second, TikTok is new. Instagram is old. Young people want to use the newest
social app that old people haven’t yet infiltrated.

~~~
rattray
> Young people want to use the newest social app that old people haven’t yet
> infiltrated.

There are actually plenty of people over 30 on TikTok FWIW.

I definitely agree that TikTok's no-login-wall NUX was wonderful. You can even
watch on a laptop without logging in.

~~~
rsa25519
> There are actually plenty of people over 30 on TikTok FWIW.

And the beauty of TikTok is that's okay. People over 30 can join the app
without disrupting my feed of age-relevant content. This is unlike a lot of
other social networks (e.g. Reddit) where content is shows from outside my
social graph

~~~
rattray
Yeah, totally – I love that 90% of the time, I have a teenager-free TikTok
experience, and most of what I see is interesting to me. But if I want to see
what's hip with the kids or whatever, I can always just open up TikTok in a
logged-out state and see the /r/all equivalent.

------
surround
Facebook launched Lasso as its own app two years ago. I’m not sure if there
were any differences between it and TikTok, but either way, it failed
miserably.

[https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/01/lasso-facebook-tiktok-
shut...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/01/lasso-facebook-tiktok-shut-down/)

~~~
jug
FB also has a Stories feature as Instagram, in turn from Snapchat, but I
barely see anyone use it while everyone and their cat (literally) use
Instagram Stories.

Also, FB took a more advanced friend list concept from Google+ but few use or
know how it works. (Like how “Acquintances” are your friends but they are
pushed down by the algorithm)

It is apparent that it’s hard to just shoehorn different usage patterns due to
different social cultures evolving on the respective networks. Let’s see how
they do this time...

~~~
blisseyGo
For me, I know majority of my younger friends use IG stories and have
abandoned snapchat.

------
rsynnott
How to appeal to Gen Z; name the thing after a form of video playback that was
totally obsolete before any of them were born.

~~~
rjkennedy98
Can't tell if the OP is being sarcastic. Just want to point out that "Tik Tok"
is the sound an analog clock makes - which is also obsolete technology -
except for the odd grandfather clock.

~~~
rampant_ai
It's closer to the sound of a metronome, which is pretty fitting and likely
where the name originated.

------
ogre_codes
It seems like Instagram is Facebook's anti-competitive tool. Whenever some new
social network crops up, Facebook bolts on a clone to Instagram. Eventually
it's going to be such a bloated mess it's going to cease being useful to
anyone.

~~~
ClikeX
Is going to be?

Instagram already lost me a while ago. It started to hamfist Snapchat stories
in there. I also believe they tried to force in Facebook Messenger features at
some point.

It also totally ruined any proper disoverability. You like one Comic Book post
and suddenly you only get stupid text only posts about superhero facts. With
no way to manually configure your interests.

And to make things worse, my personal feed got messed up because they thought
it was best to no longer show the feed chronologically. Because hiding new
posts lower in the feed, and keep showing me week-old posts on top was
obviously a good idea.

All I want is sharing pictures I took with my friends, while also looking at
photography from random people.

~~~
ogre_codes
> All I want is sharing pictures I took with my friends, while also looking at
> photography from random people.

Sharing pics & stories with friends/ family was why I started using FB years
ago. I think Instagram became popular because FB had become a polluted mess
before young people even had a chance to try it. Older people just stuck
around out of habit.

I never liked IG because generally my FB posts and images are hosted on my
blog first and crossposted, something you can't do on IG.

Fully agree that IG is already a mess. But people haven't really abandoned it
yet in numbers. They just stopped attracting new people.

~~~
ClikeX
It's like every Social Media is just doomed at some point.

Most just end up polluting their functionality so much that it destroys the
original core.

------
cboornaz17
Jumped on my Instagram explore page to see what Reels actually looks like
since the article doesn’t show any screenshots..

Of the first three posts I saw, two of them were cross posted from TikTok. Not
that it’s new to see social media content posted to another app, but is there
anything to be said for the fact that Facebook can now monetize TikToks in
another fashion?

Seems like even if they don’t win in terms of creators moving platforms, it
would still be in a creator’s best interest to post a successful TikTok again
as a Reel.

------
kashyapc
For a moment, I read the word "reels" in the headline as a verb (meaning:
"lose one's balance and stagger"), instead of a noun (film reel). But my mind
quickly readjusted: "that doesn't make sense, because FB owns Instagram."

~~~
drusepth
I know how it's supposed to be read (and I've even seen real reels at old
movie theaters!), but I still just think about fishing reels every time I see
it.

~~~
Izkata
> but I still just think about fishing reels every time I see it.

The goal is to hook you after all...

------
samcheng
Comedian Jeff Wright had a great commentary recently on how Instagram has a
history of copying upstart social networks (Vine, Snapchat, and now TikTok).

[https://twitter.com/JeffRightNoww/status/1287842365126914048](https://twitter.com/JeffRightNoww/status/1287842365126914048)

(Coincidentally, I think Jeff Wright had his breakthrough TikTok...)

------
Firebrand
Reels’ inclusion in Instagram makes the UI confusing for me. Right now it only
feeds me three or four videos that are peppered in my discover feed when I
scroll down so I have to swipe up to refresh for more videos:

[https://imgur.com/a/jDtYbVP](https://imgur.com/a/jDtYbVP)

Why not have a separate section dedicated to Reels content instead of having
it interspersed with photos and regular video posts?

~~~
reggieband
I took me doing a Google search to find the original Instagram PR release that
had instructions on where even to find Reels. But once you are in any Reel it
acts just like TikTok, you swipe up for a never-ending feed of content.

So in a sense, any Reel is a portal into "a separate section dedicated to
Reels content".

------
magic7s
I have a hunch that TikTok fakes the amount of likes that users post. I’ve
heard people say their first post goes viral. It’s an interesting strategy.
Young person posts a TikTok, “get famous”, keeps posting.

~~~
corford
I don't think it's faking. That behaviour sounds broadly inline with
[https://www.veed.io/grow/reverse-engineering-how-tiktok-
algo...](https://www.veed.io/grow/reverse-engineering-how-tiktok-algorithm-
works/)

~~~
blisseyGo
Related:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24049676](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24049676)

[https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/8/3/tiktok-and-the-
sorti...](https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/8/3/tiktok-and-the-sorting-hat)

------
esotericsean
I truly hate that Instagram is owned by Facebook. It's genuinely the best,
most positive social media platform that I've been a part of. I've made
genuine friends and found an amazing community in my niche.

Please don't destroy it, Facebook.

------
zackhsi
How powerful is the video editing compared to TikTok?

------
holografix
Instagram is what it always was for Facebook: a clear sign of the decline of
Facebook’s original product into irrelevance while it slowly mutates into
infinite town square forums trapped in valley of echoing stupidity and a less
anonymous craigslist/gumtree. The Instagram acquisition was the first clear
sign Facebook never could innovate it could only steal and perfect existing
ideas. Now they decided that outright copying is cheaper than buying, so they
copy Snapchat and now TikTok.

~~~
Panini_Jones
Facebook came out with the Oculus Quest last year which is hugely innovative.

~~~
ClikeX
Apart from Quest being a standalone device, it was just an iteration on the
original Rift. And it was another company they bought, and I'd be more
inclined to give credits to the Occulus team than to Facebook.

~~~
Panini_Jones
> Apart from Quest being a standalone device, it was just an iteration on the
> original Rift

In that it's a VR device, yes. But it's a standalone headset with Inside Out
tracking. Many people didn't think this was possible.

> And it was another company they bought, and I'd be more inclined to give
> credits to the Occulus team than to Facebook.

A significant amount of FB employees developed this headset. It is Oculus _is_
Facebook now.

------
pletsch
My biggest wish for Instagram is to stop creating new ways to format content
and give users more control over how their content is distributed. For
example, I know a few people with private accounts for close friends or
fitness accounts, why not create feeds of posts that people can subscribe to?
They have a similar feature with stories/highlights.

This is most likely to boost account #s but it's frustrating to have to follow
multiple accounts for one person.

~~~
notacoward
This, but not just for Instagram. I know people who have separate "pages" on
Facebook to represent different interests. I know people who have multiple
Twitter accounts for the same reason, and even more that I wish _would_. For
all of its weaknesses, Google Plus took a step in this direction with circles.
I think streams would be even better.

P.S. Tags could be better still, but only if they're used consistently. My
experience with other places/tools that use tags is that never ever happens,
so I'd go with streams.

------
beepboopbeep
I can't help but feel that zuckerberg has unduly influenced the president to
ban tiktok in order for them to further corner the social media market.

This feels wrong.

------
verst
Today I tried posting a Reel. This wasn't intuitive as the flow for doing this
is similar to creating a Story. When selecting an existing video as a reel I
do not have a way to edit it or add overlays and the total reel duration is 15
seconds vs 60 on TikTok.

Discovering reels is tricky also. I have to go to search and click on the word
reels within the random suggested reel at the top.

What is more - I want reels to be separate from whom I follow on Instagram. I
want to follow certain content creators for their reels, but do not want to
see their stories or photo stream. I also don't want them to show up as people
I follow on my main Instagram profile.

The TikTok features for creating content, discovering it, replying to it
(remix / duet etc) and just the responsiveness of the UI make it much more fun
and pleasant to use.

Reels does not meaningfully compete with TikTok. It will only appeal to some
of the existing user base, but not attract TikTok users.

FYI I'm 34. I post music, running, travel and random adventure clips to
Instagram, TikTok and other places.

------
ffggvv
why does everyone think they can beat tik tok just taking their existing
content and changing the navigation to clone tik tok?

people use it for the content, not the navigation style

~~~
baby
That’s what they said about Snapchat

~~~
staycoolboy
What is the status of snapchat? Does it still exist? Does anyone use it? How
do they split time between TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and the other half-
dozen platforms?

~~~
snazz
As someone roughly in the target age and location audience for all of the
things you mentioned, here's my take:

\- TikTok is somewhat mindless entertainment. Keep scrolling, watch funny or
informative videos, and the algorithm will tailor more content to your tastes.
It's fun and an absolute time-suck, but not any kind of critical
communication. I don't personally know anyone who makes TikTok content, but
most people I know watch it at least occasionally.

\- Instagram is used for sharing a more public view of your life. While most
people I know have private accounts, they usually follow and are followed by
between a few hundred and a thousand or so other accounts (think classmates
and friends of friends). Instagram is where you post photos of yourself in the
best possible light, not just silly and random things. People use Stories to
share news and post sillier and less permanent content. Not everyone just
scrolls endlessly on Instagram; I only follow people I know in real life but
many people follow celebrities and meme accounts as well.

\- Snapchat is more like a communication platform than a social media
platform. People send disappearing photos (usually quick selfies or photos of
what they're doing at the moment) to their friends. If you exchange a photo or
video with someone for any number of consecutive days, you'll start a streak
with that person, which further incentivizes you to continue sending photos to
them. Snapchat also has stories, but these are usually intended to be even
less permanent. Candid selfies with friends or videos of people doing silly
things are the main use, at least within my extended group of friends. It's
gotten no less popular recently.

\- YouTube continues to be popular. Hopefully this should be self-explanatory.
Gaming content is popular.

\- Facebook is basically unused by anyone my age other than for specific
groups that haven't migrated elsewhere.

\- GroupMe is popular for college class group chats and whatnot, but not as a
place to hang out and talk about other stuff.

\- Twitter is still occasionally used for content consumption, but not as much
as Instagram.

\- FaceTime, Snapchat's video-calling functionality, and Houseparty
(sometimes) are the usual ways to communicate via video chat between friends.

\- Discord is expanding outside of gaming circles for text and voice chat.

\- Reddit is mildly popular for meme content.

------
switch11
hats off to Facebook for being absolutely shameless and zero ethics

they don't even pretend to be honest (unlike Google) and it's a miracle so far
they haven't had to pay damages for all the 'inspiration' they have found from
other people's products

~~~
wmeredith
I'm sure 'Zuck is very sorry.

~~~
wmeredith
For reference: [https://www.wired.com/story/why-zuckerberg-15-year-
apology-t...](https://www.wired.com/story/why-zuckerberg-15-year-apology-tour-
hasnt-fixed-facebook/)

------
sidcool
This seems like a perfect opportunity since TikTok is banned in India. Most
influencers will migrate to Instagram reels. I don't like facebook's business
model, but seems they know how to make money.

------
DrBazza
Never used Tiktok, or Instagram, and Facebook just now seems to be nothing
more than a feed of irrelevant ads to, and any friends' or family posts are
relegated to the little bell icon.

I barely look at it more than once every few days now as it has lost much of
its utility.

Most of my friends and family are on other social networks and sites (twitter,
strava, discord) now with fewer, or no ads, or even just whatsapp groups on
the phone.

~~~
wy35
Not exactly sure how your personal experience with a company is really
relevant, considering that the article is specifically discussing a new
product said company is launching.

But transitioning to more intimate forms of social media is a great move, so
I'm glad you made the switch. A lot of people do find Facebook (for example)
to be too fake, while others need it to keep in touch with their family and
communities.

~~~
DrBazza
You're right my post isn't that relevant.

The product they are launching, for me, isn't relevant either.

We've long since reached peak Facebook, and its social network is fragmenting
as they're losing people for the reasons I mentioned previously. They're
effectively chasing a new audience to keep their numbers up.

------
plibither8
This is it's worldwide launch. Reels was already launched in India a few weeks
ago when the Indian government imposed a ban on TikTok.

------
euix
I find myself never actually using social media. Good friends belong to the
same Signal group chats. I have several of these which consists of cliques I
have built up over the years in school and at work and that's how I stay in
touch. For those that are further out of reach there is email and linkedin if
I really need to dig someone up from the past.

~~~
zelphirkalt
You seem to have well informed flexible friends, who are willing to try
something "new". I wish I could get a handful of my friends to use something
like Signal. Best even something not requiring a phone number. It's stupid
that Signal wants a phone number. What has my phone number to do with chatting
via Internet?

Any advice how to get your friends to switch, when they do not care much about
their privacy and have a defeatism attitude with regard to guarding their
privacy or simply do not understand, that their actions affect their friends?

~~~
euix
I find good friends often share similar technological viewpoints right down to
the basic level. The people I have on signal are pretty much all cut from the
same cloth in that regard. I.E. they tend to avoid big internet corps whenever
possible and hack their own solutions.

For people I consider casual acquaintances or just outside of the "inner
circle" so to speak, I just use SMS.

~~~
baby
Are you saying you have no diversity in your friends? They’re all technical
and they all have the same privacy view as you?

------
Touche
These types of articles are so frustrating and show why media is failing so
badly.

This is an article about a product launch that:

* Barely talks about the product at all.

* No demos of what the product does.

* Not even a single picture of what the product looks like.

* Does not link to the actual product's page.

* Very few links at all, and mostly to their own pages.

* Is 50% about the competitor's legal/political issues.

* IS 50% about the parent company's strategy in launching the product.

I don't understand why there can't be 2 articles here:

* Information about the product launch.

* An opinion article about Facebook strategy vs. Microsoft TikTok Trump.

I'm pretty sure everyone just skims these articles because they are so
uninformative. Can I be the only person who feels this way?

~~~
chris_va
This reads to me like it was written by Facebook PR (indirectly) via a press
packet.

A lot of "news" articles are just PR departments lobbying journalists. The
journalist tweaks stuff slightly, then dumps it over the wall. This sort of
thing is very cheap to produce. And, to be fair, it isn't actually new. The
more useful/novel/investigative content has slowly declined, so this is all
that's left.

There just isn't any money in writing news. Newspapers were never paid for
news content, but rather delivering ads to everyone's doorstep daily. E.g.
subscription revenue was much less than ad revenue, to the point that it was
never clear to me why subscription prices were non-zero (though they were
usually separate departments with their own P&L, so it's probably just
historical).

There are better ways to find classifieds, job listings, and brand advertising
these days... So now we have this junk. If one could find a way of financially
or otherwise incentivizing real journalism, you'd be a folk hero.

~~~
Touche
I'm not expecting investigative journalism here. I just expect the article
about a product launch to be mostly about the product being launched. Like
pull out your phone install the app and take a screenshot or two. List what it
does and how it works.

Save the corporate strategery and political intrigue stuff for another
article.

------
fatjokes
> Facebook launches its TikTok clone, Instagram Reels

FTFY.

I'm being facetious of course. The real clone here is being done by the US
gov't, who is copying the Chinese playbook: keep out a foreign company by
political means, thus encouraging local competitors.

I guess it's really true that you either die a hero or live long enough to see
yourself become the villain.

~~~
l33tbro
> keep out a foreign company by political means, thus encouraging the domestic
> tech oligopoly.

FTFY ;)

------
linsomniac
Youtube also has one, I don't remember when I first started noticing it,
because I scrolled past it for a long time before opening one. On my phone, in
the app, towards the top of the list of videos, is a section called "Stories
and short videos". So far, there is very little compelling in there.

------
Mupuff
I wonder if they waited for after the congress testimony to launch this. Not
surprisingly, Zuckerberg was questioned[1] about this strategy.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyI3ixI1xSk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyI3ixI1xSk)

------
heyheyhey
Official announcement:
[https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/introducing-i...](https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/introducing-
instagram-reels-announcement/)

------
rconti
I was going to say "I can't wait to have a second row of crap across the top
of my Instagram feed that I don't care about" ... and I open the IG app, and
now "stories" takes up two rows. haha.

------
f1ying_1otus
"log in with Tik Tok" will be their aim. They'll push their decentralized
identity platform with this and advertise that your data is safe and you
aren't being tracked.

------
whalesalad
Instagram is the beta test environment/battleground for Facebook.

~~~
identity0
Haha no. Facebook is where successful instagram features go to die.

------
circa
Ahhh yes. More cringeworthy content for us all!

~~~
xvector
Meh, comments like this are cringeworthy. Let people enjoy what they enjoy.

------
chris_wot
I read this as "Instagram reels" from the fact that Facebook launched a
rival...

------
nikolay
What a huge favor to Microsoft, which now can acquire TikTok for a lot less!

------
collegeburner
Instagram has a real shot at out-doing ticktock here. It's got much better
penetration among youth and can take serious advantage of that. Ticktock is
basically a subculture, used by the same people that used vsco a few years
ago. Just my two cents.

------
jimmaswell
Not a catchy name at all. I'd forecast failure on that alone.

------
Apocryphon
The Congressional antitrust hearings were a week ago.

~~~
RedditKon
Which is probably why Zuk is doubling down on Reels instead of trying to buy
TikTok - he know it'd never get approved.

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nikofeyn
it's amazing to me that the same group of people that consistently whine about
unfair treatment of businesses and also china are likely the same group of
people applauding the administration's taking tiktok hostage, forcing a sale
with the threat of ban and wildly making up claims of what's owed to the
government while u.s. companies swoop in to release competing features and for
a bargain buyout.

------
praveen9920
>..popular karaoke app TikTok..

Never heard it that way.

~~~
parliament32
The entire article is filled with things that are flat-out wrong, I'm not sure
how this made it past an editor.

> Reels' video distribution algorithm will resemble TikTok's: users will see
> the most popular videos at the moment, rather than a selection tailored to
> their individual profile

TikTok is _all about_ showing you content tailored to you. Compare your TikTok
feed to any of your friends' and it'll be super different.

> Reels differs from TikTok thanks to Instagram's augmented reality effects,
> which let users overlay images and filters onto their videos

TikTok's had this forever.

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mrkramer
They should've chosen better name.

~~~
r00fus
Instagram is gonna be constantly surprised and reeling from successive
announcements.

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shuringai
wow we can finally get back to being spied on by the US as usual instead of
china!

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sixhobbits
I read this as "Instagram reels [from the blast]" and was super confused about
why Instagram was being hurt by products launched from its parent company.

~~~
samizdis
Ah, but the headline is written in sentence case, not title case - as can be
seen in the words "launches", "its" and "rival", which are read before
"Instagram Reels". Rookie error ;-)

------
chessmango
"Instagram Reels" in this headline reads like present simple tense. But then
you realize that Instagram isn't a competitor to Facebook, and well...

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staycoolboy
How can there be room for so many social media apps? One option is that all of
them carve up the social media demographic in such a way that they have enough
users to be profitable, but no majority. Another outcome is that teens are
fickle, but if the platforms move from content creators to individuals, then
it is no longer a social media platform and just the new MTV(s). I have no
idea how this is going to shake out and I am fascinated by it, despite HN
being the only social media platform I use.

~~~
kart23
I think influences, celebrities and other people that teens look up to have a
massive effect on these platforms. Look at clothes, streetwear brands that
celebrities wear instantly become popular and sell out. The purpose of social
media is to interact with your friends but also see celebrities and their
pages. Even if a platform is better or cooler than another, nobodys going to
switch because none of your friends are on it and there's no point. But if
your favorite artist and a couple of popular youtubers get on, you might make
an account to see their content. And then you see that some of your friends
have it, and start using it more. After a while, maybe people stopped posting
on the old social media app and you delete it because the people you follow
aren't active on it anymore.

------
saos
Ugh

------
tqwhite
I wonder if Zuck included the Suppress Biden Tags feature?

[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/instagram-
relat...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/instagram-related-
hashtags-favoring-trump-over-biden)

------
tus88
That's a reel bad name.

------
mothsonasloth
Has anyone noticed the emergence of axios.com articles trending on HackerNews
in the last week?

Is this being engineered or is it because of the Trump interview on Axios?

~~~
exdsq
Random spot check and they all seem to be shared by users with high karma, so
I think the site is just more popular? And it’s not some sort of marketing
push by them.

~~~
munchbunny
They’ve been around for a few years with really solid (in my opinion) daily
email news digests, and the in depth reporting they’ve done seems solid too,
so I generally trust what they publish.

~~~
adsjhdashkj
How would you rate them to APNews or Economist?

~~~
munchbunny
Do you mean trustworthiness?

APNews is only good for the fact that something happened, not for any degree
of interpretation, and you have to be on your guard for what isn't being said
and what facts haven't been mentioned.

The Economist is different because they talk about only a few things and
usually add a whole lot of opinion, but when I do dig deeper I find that they
generally take defensible stances even if there are problems with their
arguments. And if Hacker News is any indication, you'll never be able to
assert anything with confidence, however well researched, without someone else
asserting the exact opposite with more confidence.

My experience with Axios is that they generally avoid taking editorial
positions that are obviously partisan, though they are clearly left of center
on the American political spectrum (then again, I think America's current
political spectrum has moved so much that the bounds of reality are now mostly
left of center). When I dig deeper, I usually find that they aren't guilty of
selectively presenting information. Their business model is still ad driven,
so they are not immune to the classic problems of money influencing news, so I
still view Axios with default skepticism.

------
dmitriid
> The new product will be embedded within Instagram

Oh god. It means that, like Instagram TV or whatever it was called, it will be
forcibly shoved down your throat for the next half a year with nagging
reminders for another year.

~~~
0xffff2
I check Instagram most days and I had never heard of Instagram TV before this
post. They can't possibly have been shoving it down everyone's throats that
aggressively.

~~~
dmitriid
You didn't use Instagram when they rolled out IGTV then. There were multiple
inline promotions, aggressive hints for the dedicated IGTV button, then they
made this dedicated button red (in an otherwise gray-and-white interface) for
several months.

It still failed, of course, and got relegated to a small button inside the
explore tab, but it the push was aggressive nonetheless. Expect the same for
"Facebook's TikTok".

