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Comment by thinbeige | Hacker News Reader

Careful.

Yes, Zuck tries to destroy Snapchhat but close to it? No way. Slowing their growth? Yes and this was expected.

Instagram is winning this space? IDK, I only know that Instagram ads perform 10x worse than FB ads. After many test drives I've never touched them again. The only ones who are monetizing on Instagram are those shiny influencers. Paired with the current brand dillution (glossy Instagram vs not so glossy stories) I am not so sure about Instagram's long-term success.

Snapchat has still a much better feature set plus much higher stickiness with direct messaging than Instagram plus a consistent DNA. Finally, Instagram has many, many liking bots (feels like Twitter before the fall).

BTW, stories only work on Instagram while on Meesenger and the FB app they are not used by anyone (at least in my cricles).

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Is it just me that thinks these are two completely different products? It's like suggesting a few years back that FB will kill Flickr because people are uploading their photos to FB instead.

People use Snapchat to share candid photos to their friends. Instagram seems way more about creating a photo-based social feed where people upload a whole range of image-based content such as quotes they like, a meal they're having, and moments they want to remember and share.

I must admit, I don't use either, but they seem like different services with a few crossover features in a similar space.

I stopped uploading to Flickr when Facebook photos were high enough resolution that I felt it didn’t diminish my DSLR photos.

They still diminish. Compare these two photos (look at the red tree in the middle ground):

FB: https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/19477594_10155418324...

500px: https://500px.com/photo/218120761/sunrise-on-monte-fitz-roy-...

While technically true, different people have different thresholds about whether a photo resolution is acceptable.

Just like how some people can accept Facebook/Google's invasion of your privacy, while others can't.

As with most things, it is a spectrum.

For most of the people looking at my pictures it didn’t matter.

Perhaps my analogy was bad, but my point is that MySpace and Facebook were extremely similar services which made Facebook a direct competitor.

When I was younger people would use MySpace to stay in touch with friends online, then for various reasons Facebook grew in popularity and people used Facebook to do basically exactly the same thing they were before on MySpace.

I don't think this is the case for Instagram and Snapchat. It's like comparing Facebook and Twitter. Twitter is where you go to share random thoughts more or less publicly to friends and followers. Alternatively, Facebook is where you go to share much more intimate content with close friends and family. And LinkedIn has a different purpose again.

One might dominate in many ways, but there is a reason why I have a public Twitter and LinkedIn and not a public Facebook. There is a reason why I post random photos and songs I like to Twitter and not to LinkedIn.

On Instagram Influencing:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-11-30/confessio...

Just out of curiosity, can you provide the data on the 10x worst performance than FB Ads?

Because I think that a claim to broad and generic to be said like that.

The wording was vague, but still seemed pretty clearly to be intended as personal experience anecdote.

If it were true and known by someone in the industry there might be competitive advantage to not making the knowledge widely known. I.e., advertising agency can show better overall performance by knowing where to place clients' ads.

A lot of supposition here, but just throwing out some reasons why something like this may be 100% true and provable without being documented as such.

I gave little more data in the other reply and I am happy to hear other experiences.

But as said the results are significantly worse than on FB. I experienced 10x.

I can relate for Fashion and other industries as well. Instagram - even if it is performing well in regards of CTR on the platform it is an awful channel in regards to actual conversions.

Only in one case I remember Instagram totally blowing FB out of the water - and that was on a photography related campaign in the high end sector.

For example, branding of beauty products/fitness/some sports equipment, it works great.

Too lazy to anonymize and upload screenshots of my FB Ad Manager.

But I can tell you that my CTRs were 10x lower compared to FB (0.15%-0.2% vs 1.5% (Unique Link CTR)) on average on categories and visuals matching Instagram followers/style/DNA. It's funny, some campaigns should have performed better on Instagram than on FB because the campaigns just matched the shiny Instagram style and consumer behavior. Nope.

Happy to hear other experiences.

From the younger demographic (22) most of the people in this area I know have simply growen up with ads on the internet and know to just ignore them even if they do not use a ad blocker that may be a issue for you. On Facebook at least from what I read there is a larger demographic to target (ala parents trying to keep track of their teenagers) who may not be used to filtering out ads so that may account for the better conversion rate.

It's ok! I think you gave a good insight on what you're saying.

The thing is, we don't use Instagram on every brand we work with - because the audience isn't there, or it's there but their usage behavior is completely different on this channel when compared to other more effective media channels.

Even if you mimic IG style, IG users aren't that prone to leave the app by clicking on outside links. This may sound cheesy, but on FB people are waiting for relevant content to come to them, on IG people are looking for inspiration.

We use it mainly for branding, and it works great for that. So Clicks/CTR to website isn't the best KPI for this platform imo.

I'm interested to hear more about why IG isn't a good platform for linking externally (whether a web browser or a native app).

If people are looking for inspiration on IG, isn't there some kind of follow-on action that they would like to take after browsing (eg. viewing a product in an e-commerce store)?

My hypothesis is that IG is somewhat analogous to reading a magazine. I pick the magazine I like to read (analogous to choosing who to follow on IG), and when I chance upon something nice, I may have a desire to buy it. It follows that the same decision-making process could happen on IG.

Does that sound logical? If not, where am I going wrong?

Snap is still losing money, so slowing growth could be a death sentence. Instagram also provides a viable alternative for people to move to if Snapchat ramps up advertising.

My own take is that they're both fads and we'll be talking about something else in 10 years either way.

IMO you can't 1:1 compare running an ad on Instagram and running the same add on FB. Instagram is such a different beast that, you really have to tailor that ad for that service specifically as well as really understanding the audience for that ad.

This is comparing two different things, Instagram ad performance vs Snapchat's feature set.

If Instagram and Snapchat continue to evolve to have similar formats, wouldn't the ads be expected to perform similarly?

„Instagram ads perform 10x worse than FB ads“

Wait what? What a completely misleading generalization. Exact opposite in my experience if you know your product and audience well.

I believe you're using biased sampling to value Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook. That's why you believe Instagram isn't valuable

Zuck doesn't try to destroy Snapchat in my opinion, it just tries to re-use the features that made Snapchat successful

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