Introducing Instagram Reels | Hacker News Reader

Introducing Instagram Reels

about.instagram.com

43 points0xedb50 comments

This flips the typical narrative of "Chinese companies copy our products and their government lets them" on its head. I understand why this is a valid business move, but I think that the sense of moral superiority over China that is so pervasive in conversations with Americans is even less credible now.

I think the criticism tends to be more focused on corporate espionage which this is decidedly not. I wouldn't say this is flipping any narrative on its head. I can't even tell the major differences between vine, tiktok, stories, snapchat, and now reels.

That’s a fair point.

Realistically, a lot of companies copy each other's products and features, within the American tech scene. The cure - software patents - is worse than the disease; remember Amazon's one click patent?

How many team chat apps appeared after Slack, for example?

Slack may have discovered a marketing niche, but team chats existed for decades.

> The cure - software patents - is worse than the disease

Might that not also apply to preventing Chinese companies copying American hardware products or manufacturing processes?

Maybe? Intellectual property is a huge sprawling topic that arguably needs different treatment for different kinds of thing. Do you have specific allegations in mind?

Because companies that do business here aren’t required to turn over IP in order to do business here and aren’t required to have a local partner? You’re comparing exceptions in one place with everyday requirements in another.

I do think the rhetoric goes a bit overboard, but people are not wrong about the problem your comment addresses. That problem is orthogonal to this Instagram product. Imitation != theft.

Pod Save America interviews Kara Swisher at the end of the most recent episode [1] And at the very end of that they discuss TikTok and China.

Swisher is no fan of Facebook, but she also sort of casually describes China as have different “values” than the United States with the implication that the values are not as good and that it is not good for a Chinese-owned TikTok to have so much data on US citizens.

It struck me because the comment went unchallenged by the host. I have my own biases against Chinese “values” due to what I’ve seen in my security work and also from what’s happening with the Uighurs in China now.

Is there contemporary moral superiority of the United States over China? I think most Americans would say yes without a lot of detailed reasons why.

I’d compare it to whether Craigslist has moral Superiority over eBay. Seems possibly obvious but the truth is more nuanced.

However, all historical context is set aside to make this statement. United States’ current and past moral failings are not really held up for discussion.

[1] https://podcast.app/youve-got-no-mail-e109788978/?utm_source...

This fixation on "US moral failings" as a stopping point for the conversation is not especially useful.

Both countries have done and are doing great things. Both countries have done and are doing reprehensible things, and they deny it as best they can.

One country codifies individual liberty as a guiding principle (however imperfectly fulfilled).

The other eschews liberty as a distraction from the national interest, indeed it views the spread of democratic government as a threat.

US values do not require the world to become less free. Can one say the same of China?

Isn't TikTok just a Vine clone? Social networks have always been derivative and iterative.

s/copy our products/steal protected IP/g

You could easily make the case that Facebook is copying Twitter (Vine), an American tech company that TikTok copied.

But let’s be real, there’s nothing impressive or innovative about making an Instagram clone with short video clips rather than pictures. All this talk about its magic algorithm is ridiculous. What would be impressive is if they were profitable, which they as far as I know are not. Their scalability is also overrated since other companies are doing all the heavy lifting, and they’re spending hundreds of millions on attracting users to their free video sharing app.

Tbh Tiktok wasn't the first service to offer short videos. Douyin copied (and eventually bought) Musical.ly and before all of that was Vine.

Copying snapchat to make stories. TikTok to make Reels. And fb originally bought Instagram. Can the big players just copy or buy every competitor at some point and remain on top?

did they hurt their competitors by copycatting stuff? It seems like tiktok has a different user base that does not overlap with the way ppl use instagram.

> did they hurt their competitors by copycatting stuff?

They kneecapped Snapchat pretty effectively when they stole the story feature, first in Instagram and then in Facebook proper.

The big differentiator between these isn't per se the way that content is shared/created, but the network itself. So, as long as the network is intact, then in my opinion yes the big players can just copy/buy every competitor and remain on top.

Instagram Stories were not quite a Snapchat-killer, but they did take a huge chunk of the Snapchat market share. This could be similar.

They weren't a Snapchat killer but they immediately cut off future growth and stalled it out for a solid 2-3 years.

You don't have to kill the competition in social to win, you just need to stop their growth. They can retain some percentage of users but if the growth is stalled out and you are dominate them in 5:1 marketshare it's as good as dead.

Snapchat is interesting - in my age group (mid to late 20s), it got obliterated by Instagram a few years ago, to the point where it feels "old" to use it. However it is very popular with younger people (college and early 20s).

Do it for the Reels?

I'm not sure the tone of Instagram really agrees with the content of TikTok, which feels like it picked up where Vine left off.

The picture / TV sharing feature of Instagram is curated while stories tend to be a bit more candid in my experience. Think this is trying to add another level of more transient sharing.

Should've called it "Moments" or "Memes."

I personally like the name Reels, it implies a level curation needed in the process.

I wonder if this will work as well as Stories did. I mean, technologically it will, sure, but if you start with the customer in mind, Snapchat is not TikTok.

Instagram and Snapchat share the same market. Like Facebook, they originated among college students, and became the default platforms of that young adult demographic. Instagram copying Snapchat features is brutal to Snapchat because Snapchat power users were probably Instagram/Facebook power users as well.

TikTok and Musical.ly, as has been written to death by tech journalists, are much more dominate in a younger demographic. They're sort of unique among social platforms in their ability to do so. I wonder if Instagram has enough penetration in that demographic to really syphon off a meaningful chunk of users, or if this will just block Instagram's existing users from migrating?

Anecdata for sure, but my younger aged family members (and their general age group) on TikTok are all on Instagram.

Another data point. My sons group are all on both, but no one actively uses IG. TikTok is their app of choice. My son says IG is boring. I think Reels has a major uphill journey.

To add to that anecdote, my younger siblings use both IG and TikTok. And Snapchat is pretty much old news according to them.

I see the advantage of tying it in with Instagram, I think it will help user growth early on, but I think it will likely inhibit growth later on. What exactly are you signing up for when you sign up for Instagram? Are you signing up for Reels, OG Instagram, or Stories? Stories at least sort of made sense with the original Instagram, but Reels doesn't feel like a fit at all to me. The bloat of the app at this point seems like a barrier to using it.

Maybe they'll be able to spin off a separate Reels app as well at some point? That's the only way I'd ever be interested in it.

I feel like IG missed the mark with the 15 second video limit if they want an actual competitor to TT. The really really good TT content: original songwriters and musicians, semi-pro chefs, artists, woodworking, blacksmithing, skateboarding, sewing, just really passionate nerds teaching or showing off their skills benefit from longer-form videos.

The format of TT has made it really easy for people to share their hobbies but isn't plagued by the Wadsworth Constant.

Who couldn't see this coming, honestly? Zero surprises and it's the obvious move to try to consolidate a market in which they are pretty big already.

I'm hoping, as they push more to support creation, they address their compression/encoding on Android devices.

On my Pixel, the only way I can get high-quality videos in my stories is by recording using the Camera app, and then sharing to Instagram. If I add any text/sticker/overlay, the final video has obvious artifacting.

Kinda lines up well with MS talking with tiktok. Wonder why MS wants tiktok still? The US and India banned them and now Instagram copied them too. I do t know how the inluencers move across social networks but why would users stick to tiktok? In that scenario why would MS want it unless its for an extravagant discount?

They might want the people working on it who know how to work with video.

I have to say they are really annoying in "Explore" tab because they take more than half of the screen-space.

I can remember a slew of video based apps that Instagram killed when it added video in the early days - Viddy, SocialCam, Kik, Vine, they were all in competition and Instagram came and ate their lunch, then did the same to Snapchat, now tiktok.

at what point is competition stifled when large companies can just totally copy competition by throwing money at something. In ten years, we will have an American Samsung.

How would you address the problem when you can’t copyright a business model or an idea? It’s very true the value is in the execution, and in a lot of cases, an enormous tech company with effectively limitless resources will always be able to execute better than you.

I’m a fan of using regulation against such entities and behaviors, I’m just unsure what the antitrust or monopoly issue is on short social video clips. You could build something similar with Backblaze, Cloudflare, and mobile apps.

where's the problem for the consumer?

One might argue the consumer doesn't get access to products that could be superior due to incumbents choking out innovators (like saplings trying to grow in a forest below mature trees blocking out the sun).

if you're building a business which a large company can just come in and copy by throwing money at it, then you're doing it wrong.

You should either have a plan or try hard to come up with one to prevent that situation, or avoid that market altogether. This is business 101 and is the most frequently asked question when you pitch a VC: "What will you do when Google copies you?"

Tiktok is worth about 50 billion dollars. Hard to argue that’s “doing it wrong”

The valuation has nothing to do with "doing it right", especially when it's not even a public company.

Also, TikTok won't just die because of Instagram. Instagram failed so many times with their copycat products. Which is exactly my point. The product will win if a large company can't win simply by throwing money at it.

At least an American Samsung would be useful, if it means bringing back semiconductor manufacturing to the US. Better than having our brightest engineers work on copying each other's photo apps.

It's not about large competitors with deep pockets, but that network effects mean a shitty FB clone can be worth more than entire businesses designed around specific concepts.

It is an interesting definition of competition if you can stifle it by allowing competitors who offer very similar or identical products.

When I was a kid that was competition.

i speak in the spirit of creating an environment that doesn't allow large companies to destroy small companies by copying their ideas or buying them out, which i believe is beneficial to society at large in the longer run. It is my fundamental belief that if left unchecked, large tech companies will become monopolies in their fields (which might already have happened).

This is a response to TikTok, I guess?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com