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Comment by chmod775 | Hacker News Reader

So they crippled a better performing product to protect a lesser product - or rather to protect some egos.

I refuse to believe they are that stupid.

Never underestimate the importance of ego. :-) Companies frequently make bad acquisitions due to the ego of the founder. (This is not an example) Other times founders spike the pet projects of their rivals.

A similar situation happened at my company: it's not just egos. You have a legacy product that is still bringing in a majority of the revenue, and then you have the new thing that will _eventually_ be the key rev driver. It's not easy to convince employees that they should just shut up and accept their bonuses to be dependent on converting a loss leader to "the future of the company".

> You have a legacy product that is still bringing in a majority of the revenue

Ah the old Kodak Kompany Killer, by the time the company decides to pivot to new technology it is already too late, the entrenched highly paid people can't or won't change.

M&A guy here - I concur. People would be amazed to know that there is a non-zero number of situations where companies get acquired for non-financial reasons.

It looks stupid because you're assuming all actors have the same goal: make the company they work for the "best," however that is measured. But that's often not the goal of executives. They are often more interested in protecting and gaining power.

Principal-Agent problem. :-) The interests of managers frequently diverge from the owners, and even each other. You see this with execs sub-optimizing for their personal metrics (or size of empire) at the expense of the whole.

Offering equity helps, but if people’s contribution doesn’t impact the stock price, there is less incentive to act holistically.

Companies do this all the time, and single-product companies are especially vulnerable if the one product is the founder's pet product.

Facebook app probably has better ad revenue potential?

I just opened up instagram and scrolled through for a bit and I didn’t see a single ad. Seems very different from the Facebook experience.

I don't know which Instagram you're using, but every two or three posts for me is an ad. The "second person's story" when watching stories is an ad. Instagram has, by far, more ads than any other app that I use.

Perhaps it depends on your average engagement with the app (the official iOS one, to be clear). I only open it once a month or so, and follow only a few dozen accounts. Perhaps it doesn’t know enough about me to target ads or there is some algorithm that avoids showing ads when you come back after a long break.

Don't-scare-new-users-away mode. Ease you back in with a gradual increase in ads the more engagement they see from you?

If you don't care about notifications uninstall the app and use the web interface in a browser. It's not quite as slick and responsive as the app, but I've never seen an ad there.

Unfortunately the web version still lacks messages and stories, which are what brings me in.

Stories are on the web (to view, not to publish)

I also think instagram ads are actually pretty close to normal posts [embedded effectively] so to me they are more effective. another reason to avoid being used by zuck

me too ever since about Nov/Dec? is when I noticed the increase in "sponsored content". and the result has been me spending less time looking at IG

Mine used to be completely devoid of adds, and then all of a sudden every 2-3 posts became an add, and the second story - just like yours.

I don't know how I had a glorious ad free instagram, but some people do. At the time mine was ad free, others complained of constant ads.

There's a small subset of people on Instagram that have "ad free" accounts. I have two Instagram accounts, a larger and older one, and a newer and smaller one. The larger one has never gotten ads despite following several hundred people. The smaller one has ads even with zero followers and an empty feed.

Mine was completely add free for the first few years that I had it, then suddenly changed one day. Since then I've mostly stopped using it and only scroll through it via their web interface where UBO makes it tolerable.

I'm scrolling through my IG feed to compare notes. Of my feed posts, the following are ads:

2nd, 6th, 10th, 15th, 20th, 25th, 30th…

Of my stories, the following are ads:

2nd, 5th, 9th, 13th, 17th, 21st, 25th, 29th, 33rd…

It's a tough pill to swallow, I'll give you that, because it challenges the idea that we live in a just and ordered world. If it turned out that nobody was in charge, or that those in charge are no smarter than we are and don't particularly deserve to be in charge, or even that they're mismanaging things grossly... well that means nobody in the world really knows what the hell's going on and we're all just floundering along. That feels like being orphaned. Or pushed out the door into the cold night with no shirt. "Le Roi est mort - vive le Roi!"

History is full of awkward acquisitions and politics where business decisions are made poorly and for all the wrong reasons.

you don't seem to understand organizations and their politics then, or more charitably, you're being intentionally obtuse. egos, esteem and positioning are the primary drivers of decision-making in an organization (i.e., a political body).

the good of the product is of secondary concern in most organizations. it's the opposite in (young) startups, because their success depends on it. this, to me, is one of the main reasons to work for a startup, not the financial rewards or the vague experience of it. it's to build a product you're proud of.

Instagram may have been better performing when it came to users, but likely FB is more profitable per user.

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