Facebook has a TikTok now | Hacker News Reader

Facebook has a TikTok now

techcrunch.com

39 pointsunripe_syntax39 comments

@dang I think most people assume the headline means "Facebook has a TikTok [clone] now", (which wouldn't be new since Instagram reels has been around awhile) rather than "Facebook has a TikTok [account] now". Should the headline be changed?

Yeah not what I was expecting at all

(I didn’t assume this. And making HN users click beyond the title isn’t a bad thing.)

This is the intention behind most clickbait titles and not something I would like to see encouraged on HN.

I did. Wouldn't have clicked if I'd just known that "FB has an official TikTok account".

Maybe. But all the ckickbaits are bad ckickbaits.

Exactly why I always click on the comment view BEFORE clicking on titles now... It's saved me from a lot of wasted time, drama, spam, viruses, and even undesired porn bait.

Don't reward bad behavior with a click.

Not the impression that I had when reading the headline; it made sense as Facebook has a TikTok [account] now as in FB is now going to be publishing content on the platform. Comparing Instagram reels and TikTok video content, in my mind, aren't really compatible but that comes after having used TikTok and never really engaging with Insta reels.

What a pea-brained blog post.

Top 10 tweets by Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah that’s right! You heard it here first, Zuckerberg is on Twitter! Whoops, sounds like Meta is grasping at straws, ahem ummmm awkward.

This published article was brought to you by ExpressVPN ™

Agreed, it's a fluff piece.

Slightly amusing though: Zuckerberg has a famously inactive Twitter account that's not even verified: https://twitter.com/finkd

"Playing with TweetDeck. It's pretty neat. 7:39 PM · Feb 27, 2009"

All it took was 5 years to strip away his passion, power corrupts lol.

I thought techcrunch was more reputable in the tech scene. Did this change? This article sounds like a parody.

I think with the rise of “swipe up oriented” social media a lot of these older sites have to cater with click bait articles.

And TikTok is on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tiktok

Who cares?

They made an account on TikTok. And even assuming it really was Facebook, that's it.

> “People have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time, and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly,” Zuckerberg said. He later added that “TikTok is so big as a competitor already and also continues to grow at quite a faster rate off of a very large base.”

If that's not "Zuck is scared" I don't know what is.

Dumb question for the youngers out there. Why didn't Vine do well?

7 seconds is too little

tl;dr: Publicly traded company secures its namespace.

That's pretty much it. Most likely someone was using their trademark on tiktok so they decided to claim the username. The account will remain empty, and possibly even disabled soon.

What page in Dante's Inferno is that alluded to?

Facebook or Meta is so out of touch with reality it seems, the Gen-Z he's trying to woo over have completely written off FB, it's just not relevant anymore.

Youtube shorts is the only good competitor, Facebook has long past it's novelty in most developed countries, and it's only hope seems to be winning over Gen-Z from the rest of the world....which really has no ad spend, i'm talking countries like Burkina Faso and Syria...but even there people just don't trust Facebook and how can you?

FB have coincided in almost every instance of regime change from Arab Spring to Ukraine, more recently allowing posts promoting violence against Russian speakers in those regions.

I don't know what Zuck is thinking but he's pivot to monopolizing metaverse and VR seems to have fizzled and the markets are not showing respect at all. At this rate we might MAAA without Meta.

I long questioned these extravagant acquisitions with the exception of Instagram, but now he's launching an NFT on the platform? It's just so weird to me how quickly it's becoming MySpace'd

Meta also owns Instagram, which is still popular (Reels are much more popular than YouTube Shorts it seems)

Do you have any data to back this up?

Here's looking forward to the acronym becoming "AANG" so we can make Airbender references and quote the show.

For today I think I'll just go with the pithy "If I try, I fail".

Edit: More charitably and optimistically, I just googled Avatar quotes, and found Aang also said: "When we hit our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change".

It's too early to write them off. They're not Kodak, they're well funded and willing to change direction as their moat disappears.

for years the only minor gains they’ve made in terms of brand affinity involve buying other companies

Just like how Microsoft back in the 2000s thought they were 'entitled' to compete with every form of software (and hardware), now Facebook (Meta) is doing the same. It really doesn't cost them anything to continue copying and acquiring until they out compete their competitors. Just look at Clubhouse for example.

The difference with Meta is that they are in hardware now for a long time and have been selling their shovels for Oculus / Meta VR end users for a while so they are not going to get 'MySpace'd' that easily.

As for them getting into NFTs and cryptocurrencies in Instagram so what?, It costs them nothing to even do that and that makes Meta even more relevant.

Even though I dislike their products, I'm sorry but the fact is, they are simply not going to be 'irrelevant' any time soon. In a few years time we will see the 'experts' and 'critics' slowly realising how horribly incorrect they were about Zuckerberg once again.

This news is basically a nothing burger anyways since blocking out your branding on different platforms is pretty much just SOP so this response seems way overblown.

So the strategy you're giving to Meta is to take its ball and go home? Meta might or might not be a relevant company in twenty years - it's definitely relevant today and it'll certainly be relevant in a decade barring some congressional intervention - while they're still earning off older generations they're going to make a whole bunch of attempts to hook Gen Z and hey - the fad after ticktock might just be the fad they successfully capture.

Things changed pretty quickly for myspace. The fact that facebook is bleeding users today, the younger generation wants nothing to do with it, and the older people who are using it are nearing death...

I'm not 100% certain Facebook will survive the next ten years. The stock value is nearly half of it's peak and they're not doing anything exciting outside of internet arguments. What's the roadmap for Facebook? If they think people will strap an Oculus to their head all day they're living in fantasy land.

I would bet on tiktok myspacing before meta. Tiktok right now is riding one big trend which will move on to something else at some point. Will they be able to pivot?

What is that big trend? Video? Humans love watching things, eyes are our primary sensory input.

Surely the skin (touch) is our primary sensory input?

Tiktok styled video and culture. As fresh as it appears now in a few years it will feel dated.

"more recently allowing posts promoting violence against Russian speakers in those regions"

This is false. Russian invaders != Russian speakers

> As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as 'death to the Russian invaders.' We still won't allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians," a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-facebook-inst...

> Youtube shorts is the only good competitor

This is false. Instagram Reels is a LOT more popular than YT shorts.

Source: I work with Gen Z teens extensively

> Source: I work with Gen Z teens extensively

It's not that I don't believe you, but that's not a good source. Please provide some actual data to back up your statement.

I tried, but I'm unable to find any reliable stats on MAUs for YT Shorts or IG reels, so I only have anecdotal data to offer.

Microsoft simply doesn't belong in that name. I can feel the Microsoft PR trying to force their way into that acronym.

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