Instagram founders left because of changes imposed from above | Hacker News Reader

Instagram founders left because of changes imposed from above

nytimes.com

141 pointsthrowawaybbqed22 comments

I don't believe this will make much difference. I think the platform had already been in decline for at least the past year, because IG seems to be moving away from what made it compelling in the first place.

I don't know what algorithmic changes they've made, but my experience is far less "organic" content from real people, and far more exposure given to the local IG celebrities, low-quality meme stuff optimised for engagement, and impersonal marketing stuff.

It used to be about people. I don't think it is anymore.

I think it's the same with every social network. People start using it, they're excited, put their stuff out there, it's fun to use. Then, after a few years the marketers realise that is a thing, and all of a sudden all the content from your friends sits next to all this professional content. People don't feel like their stuff is good enough, and they stop posting, preferring to browse all the awesome stuff from other people. And at the end, everyone stops checking in as frequently, because they realise that none of the fun, exciting stuff is left, it's only marketing for crappy products with a thin veneer of thoughtfulness sprinkled on top.

> “Social media is in a pre-Newtonian moment, where we all understand that it works, but not how it works,” Mr. Systrom told me, comparing this moment in the tech world to the time before man could explain gravity. “There are certain rules that govern it and we have to make it our priority to understand the rules, or we cannot control it.”

This is the person I want running a social media today.

Lately, Instagram has become very pushy. If you go to your profile page in the app, it shows notification badges at the top right corner for stuff that might have happened in the Facebook app. It's so unnecessary! I'm sure FB wants to push more changes like that. All good things must come to an end ... sigh.

Man I hate notification dots that won’t go away. Like in PayPal, there’s a “notification” that I have a “to-do” for setting up a new profile! That is something I will never do, it’s not something I can mark as “read”, it’s just a damned red dot in the corner forever now.

Facebook is going to get worse and so is Zuckerberg. I would short FB if I had a position.

The reasoning is, once you see a CEO installing loyal lieutenants. Who does not value conflicting, and opposing views. You know the company will loose the plot soon. With out any moderation from others I believe that FB will accelerate their disregard for their users while publicly communicating something else.

Fundamentally the Instagram founders and WhatsApp founders leaving is due to a values conflict with Zuckerberg and the culture at FB. My theory is there are the values they talk about and communicate externally, which is not congruent with what is practiced.

There was conflict due to these unspoken values and Zuckerberg took the easy way out. Install people loyal to him. This is a sign of weak leadership.

Edit:

It also seems like ego is getting the better of Z

“Severe cutbacks ordered by Mr. Zuckerberg in how much Instagram was promoted on the main Facebook platform”

Either that or instagram ads are not as profitable as FB?

Edit2: “That’s a shame, since that’s exactly what Facebook needs. Which is to say, people willing to challenge the groupthink that for too long included a stubborn resistance to admitting and addressing the company’s flaws.”

This is the biggest danger

The problem with shorting is that everything they’re doing is driving towards higher revenue. Any negative effects of their actions could be measured in years, not months or quarters.

The other issue is that more than anyone, Facebook very shrewdly mitigated their competition by M&A; where would users go?

Exactly.

Shorting leaves you vulnerable to an infinite amount of debt. It's not as easy as it sounds.

Outright short-selling has unbounded losses, but there are other ways of "being short" (i.e. betting on a price drop) where the loss is limited, such as buying put options, though these tend to be time-limited as well, to a couple years.

Yeah. Good point the effects will take several years to be demonstrated. So maybe a better comment would be, avoid FB for holding in the long term.

Would you think they are sacrificing the long term for the short?

I suspect we will get more scandals from FB.

"I would short FB if I had a position."

Just because your experience is getting worse doesn't mean in any way shape or form that the company is in trouble.

" WhatsApp founders leaving is due to a values"

This is really hard to handle.

Values? They no problem taking billions of dollars from Zuck. Moreover, they are not stupid people - they knew that the money has to come from somewhere, and that ads are basically the only way FB is going to work.

The bizarre the kind of naive pop-culture logic floating around out there the last little bit.

If WhatsApp founders didn't want ads, they why'd they sell to FB? Why not just stay independent? Surely their model was unsustainable on some level.

They knew exactly what they were getting into with FB to the point that it was even spelled out in the contract, which is why Zuck has lawyers present when speaking to WA founders.

Of course there are questions as to 'other means of monetization' and 'the degree of monetization' but we cannot be pale in this: there must be monetization just a surely gravity will pull you down to earth.

The only reasonable discussion is 'how' and possibly 'how much'.

I can tell they left. Right after they left, the number of ads nearly doubled and I was prompted to upload my phone's contacts.

>I was prompted to upload my phone's contacts

Maybe I was naive and willing to give the benefit of the doubt to tech corporations, but I always hoped this was requested for benign purposes (not that I ever allowed it except maybe once in my life because there was an incentive bonus). I'm glad you've cleared up my misconception on this.

I thought the same, but my reaction now is to have deleted my account.

I wonder what drives people at this stage of success.

The article talks about a fight regarding weather or not to implement a TV like service into Instagram.

When you have built something like Instagram, is that really the next step you deeply care about? Implementing the next feature?

They're trying to milk it for all the money they can get at this point. Very sad.

I guess it's hard, sort of like staying for the kids. The thing is they built ig, and now they are literally letting it go in fb's hands just to get away from Zuckerberg. Either "six years was enough" is at least 30% or some small fraction to make the difference or they must have faced some serious strife and conflict to prompt them to leave under these circumstances.

I'm not a fan of Zuck or FB, but they did sell it (for more money than most users on this board will see in their lifetime). It's not like it was stolen and they have to walk away.

They have already let it go, the question is whether they want to be around while Zuckerberg' s vision is imposed on their kid.

Vesting schedule, eg, golden handcuffs, that are part of the terms of the m&a deal. They (usually) don't just hand you only a pile of stock, they want the tech founders to keep working on this thing as long as possible, so that they're a) not building something else cool that someone else will buy and b) keep any other corp from hiring them (talent m&a play).

Put up with random crap at gigacorp until you can walk away with another X deci/centimillion$.

Is it possible that 6 years was their vesting schedule?

So that is why longer Instagram videos aren’t a thing yet? Zuck not wanting to risk competition with videos on FB? How stubbornly short sighted.

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