It's a stupid strategy. All my friends (early 20s) are hardly active on Facebook, if at all and instead prefer the likes of Instagram and Snapchat for a simple reason: you can actually share your life with your friends and see theirs.
Speaking for myself, I hardly care about my Facebook account. My feed is plastered with garbage content and tired memes. I understand why they made the shift to being a content-consumption platform but it seem very short-sighted given that the content is low-quality, redundant, and seriously getting boring now.
I wager that people, like myself, are looking for an actual online social network. That's why I like Instagram, I can actually see videos and photos of my friends, whether it is celebrating their birthday, sightseeing, dancing at a party, or simply going through the grind of everyday life.
Not being a product-visionary, I cannot tell what drives Facebook to adopt this strategy but I find it puzzling that they could fail to understand that my demographic is leaving Facebook (in terms of engagement) because it is hardly social anymore. In fact, it is more akin to a worse 9Gag/Reddit/Buzzfeed mashup, with the occasional aunt or elderly family friend sharing some obscure article using CAPS LOCK.
I don't remember seeing anyone I know publish a status or a photo album in the past... what, three or four years?
> think it'd be smart to simply enhance Instagram's ad platform
The amount of ads has exploded over the past few months, it has made the product far less enjoyable for me. I don't mind ads but it bother me that they disguise it as content in your feed.
>If people start to become dissatisfied w/ Instagram because of "Facebook-ification" that may open up a market for a new competitor.
I think Snapchat would be in a nice position to take-over. I do prefer Instagram over it, but at this point I'm just desperate for a platform that doesn't sucks or isn't headed that path.