
Facebook Makes Moves on Instagram Users - pdog
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-13/facebook-is-desperate-for-instagram-s-millennials
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tribune
As a member of the relatively hip 20-something social set in New York, I can
say with confidence that Instagram is "where it's at" with this group. The
introduction of stories and other Snapchat-like features has dramatically
increased Instagram's usage among my friends (and definitely snagged plenty of
app-hours from the former).

Like the article says, Instagram is absolutely an escape from the hostile
interfaces and hostile posts that abound on core Facebook. It's still cool and
it's still fun. Whatever the internal power dynamics, it seems unlikely that
Facebook would be stupid enough to throw this away. What do they care if their
bread gets buttered through the Instagram app?

Another interesting thing to note about Instagram is that a high follower
count has become a status symbol. As people invest time and effort in building
a large following, their commitment to the platform increases. It wouldn't
surprise me if Instagram accounts for more than half of Facebook's value in
the near future.

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code_duck
Facebook has been steadily making Instagram worse since they acquired it, by
adding more and more features. Basically, they’re turning it into Facebook,
the existing product, because that’s what they know how to do.

Currently, users in my Instagram social group are pretty unhappy with the
change to a filtered feed, which produces a lack of visibility. This is
exactly like the Facebook newsfeed, Where I can post something to my 2000, 500
friends… It gets no likes and no comments, compared to posting in a group with
basically the same member where the same content receives plenty of attention,
because it was actually displayed to the people who chose to follow me,
without me giving Facebook money. There’s not much point in having 8,000
followers if they only show it to 2 percent of them.

~~~
542458
> Facebook has been steadily making Instagram worse since they acquired it

Define worse, because basically every metric I'm aware of says that instagram
is more popular and has higher user engagement than ever.

I think your "filtered feed" complaint is something that really ticks off a
narrow segment of users, but that the remaining 99% doesn't care about at all.
All they notice is a more interesting and relevant feed. Look at it this way -
basically every major social network (instagram, twitter, facebook, youtube,
etc) has implemented some sort of filtered feed. Every time some small segment
of tech-savvy users or power users gets extremely annoyed and complains
loudly, but I'm unaware of any network reversing the decision and going back
to pure chronological - to me, that says that their internal engagement
numbers overwhelmingly justify the decision.

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niftich
The purpose of the algorithmic feed (vs. chronological) is to decouple the
surfaced content from clear and present attributes of the content like its
creation time and author, such that the feed is a neverending, if mostly
pleasing smattering of content from the accounts you follow. Platforms like it
because they can opaquely tune the feed for a particular end:

\- help users who follow few accounts, or follow low-volume accounts, seem
like they have more content to look at; this helps retention

\- lift viral content higher, to reward users producing popular content, and
expose it to other users assuming wisdom of the crowds

\- expose a different set of content on successive views; this helps
engagement

\- put ads in your feed with higher frequency, whose perceived density would
be much more jarring given the reference points provided by the unchanged
ordering of a chronological feed

In many cases, these changes disadvantage the most the sort of people the
platform cares to retain the least.

~~~
woolvalley
I find the opposite. Things often repeat with the algorithmic feed when I open
the app again, things from days or weeks ago, while there is already fresh
content that was posted minutes ago. But since it's not in time order, I miss
the new things.

~~~
code_duck
I agree. I often am presented with posts from 2-4 days ago, even when the
people involved have posted newer content. This is awful when I'm going to an
event or convention and trying to see what people are posting about it. And
also, run out of content on IG and FB and it starts repeating posts, even
though I follow thousands of people and obviously there is a huge amount of
new content available which FB is not presenting. It seems like they select
content from a rotating pool of 20-30 people at any time.

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40acres
Facebook scooping up Instagram has to be one of the best corporate
acquisitions over the past 20 years. Hindsight is 20/20 but it makes sense
that a simpler social network like Snapchat and Instagram would be a threat to
Facebook once everyone's grandma got an account. A really interesting
counterfactual would be a world were Facebook, Instagram & Snapchat are all
competing.

~~~
beefield
> A really interesting counterfactual would be a world were Facebook,
> Instagram & Snapchat are all competing.

Obviously, antitrust laws are among the many things I know nothing about, but
it still difficult for me to understand how they can allow facebook, instagram
and whatsapp to be one corporation.

~~~
ggg9990
Read the book “Chickenshit”

~~~
lioeters
The Chickenshit Club - "Why don't crooked corporate CEO's go to jail anymore?
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jesse Eisinger uncovers culture of
cowardice, incompetence, and corruption in both government and finance."

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ArmandGrillet
Instagram Stories is one of the most addictive application I have ever used.

It obviously replaced Snapchat but also Facebook, Tinder, even WhatsApp. What
are you friends up to? Check your friends' stories. Wanna see some beautiful
stories? Check some influencers' stories. Wanna tease a party or share fun
pictures during a party, only with your friends? Use Instagram Stories. This
app is a dream for people in their twenties.

The number of use cases this app created and the engagement it causes (the
delay between posting a story and when it is seen by friends is rarely more
than a few minutes) is really astonishing. Facebook will likely not die
anytime soon, but Instagram is now the app and its acquisition was one of the
smartest moves in the history of Facebook. If you want to learn more about the
acquisition, I strongly recommend this article:
[https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2013/06/kara-
swishe...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2013/06/kara-swisher-
instagram)

~~~
rimliu
For me Instagram Stories made Instagram worse :( But that's because I still
look at Instagram as an photo sharing app, not social network app. I guess I
will need to revise my views sooner or later :(

~~~
subpixel
Of course stories and all the other modifications have made Instagram worse.
The same way reality tv made television worse. But people love it and just eat
it up.

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grblovrflowerrr
I don't know about the states but Instagram is a major promotional tool for
cafes and restaurants in Japan. People take photos of their drinks and dishes
and share them on Instagram, tagging the cafe and a lot related tags. Meta-
accounts with lots of followers then repost those and create buzz for the
cafes. Then on the weekends the cafes get swarmed by people who found out
about them through Instagram, repeating the cycle.

If you're in a major metro area in Japan and want to find the on-trend coffee
joints, check out Instagram.

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nbar1
I don't see this as an issue. Google does it with all of their products.

If you own a flooring company and a cabinet company, you're going to try to
convince your flooring customers to buy your cabinets.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
I don't see an issue, but I think it's funny how many of IG users STILL don't
know they're actually using Facebook.

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martin-adams
Not really any different having two jewellery stores opposite each other in a
shopping mall giving you the feeling of choice. Only to discover they are
owned by the same company.

~~~
amorphid
I saw Shane Robison give a talk about the HP+Compaq merger. [1] He advantage
that came from the merger was getting more shelf space in retail stores.
Having some influence and/or control of what got displayed in the HP
shelfspace and the Compaq shelfspace was considered valuable.

[1] [https://www.crunchbase.com/person/shane-
robison](https://www.crunchbase.com/person/shane-robison)

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pull_my_finger
One thing I noticed after the most recent FB fallout, was that FB started
aggressively promoting ads for IG. Now I guess they are trying to recollect
their users now that things have calmed down a bit.

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andy_ppp
With all the mess that keeps getting added to insta, I would love Twitter to
add a basic photos thing that was just the Instagram feed without all the
Snapchat rubbish.

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cm2012
Instagram is a good 20% of most Facebook advertiser's account spend already.
Not at all insignificant. For young and female targeted products, it's even
higher.

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anant90
A for-profit business is moving levers under its control to increase its
profits. Nothing surprises me about this.

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XalvinX
Hard to believe a billion people use this nearly an hour a day....don't people
have lives anymore? Sad, is what this really is. While there have been times
I've used sites like reddit that much, it is a helluva lot different being
involved in a dozen ongoing conversations about deep subjects than looking at
pictures and saying the equivalent "ooh, nice picture! your cat is so cute."
or "that latte art is so super keen" 100 times a day.

Get a life, world.

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meesterdude
Already deleted my facebook - not much stopping me from deleting my instagram
next. But i'm not a very active user anyway, so i'm not sure if it'll make its
way into the few folks i follow.

~~~
earthandmoon
The problem will not be solved by you and me deleting Facebook, Instagram or
Google. The biggest problem is your friends who share your name and number
with these social apps without thinking and without your approval. And you
can’t even ask these big social tech companies to delete it. That’s the really
scary thing in all this!

~~~
earthandmoon
I would like to add: the implications of someone adding your personal
information unauthorised to these social networks has not been tried legally.

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lokedhs
With the GDPR, it's about to be. It will be interesting to follow.

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XalvinX
I, for one, am quite proud of Europe for taking steps to protect her
citizenry. Hopefully the rest of the world will follow shortly.

