Hacker News Reader

Comment by cft | Hacker News Reader

Even though the original product is dead, they bought WhatsApp and Instagram, which are far from dead

Instagram’s incessant design tweaking, it’s algorithm adjustments which now give preferential treatment to “reels” to an absurd degree and the expansion of advertising on the feed (I’ve seen people write as much as 5x more) all positively reeks of desperate product managers. Instagram is going the same way as facebook it just has a bit further to go

Algorithmic feeds are the harbinger of doom for social media. They all get immediately and progressively worse when it's implemented (and it always will be because that's the business model).

This is endemic to Metas culture though, they’re a metrics driven company so metrics drive their design decisions.

No one important at Instagram is fighting for the vision of what IG is. They’re just fighting to try and claw eyeballs away from emerging platforms and their success is being judged on how many people they get to push on these new formats. They don’t care if it’s at the detriment to what made their product great to begin with, because all they’re looking at is “how many reels are they watching. How many stories are they posting”.

Thing is with this strategy because there is no overall vision and no one standing up and saying “we shouldn’t add this” you get the equivalent of a burger restaurant serving sushi and tacos too but their burgers just suck now.

Crazy seeing it happen as the competing experiences encroach on screen space. IG now has Snapchat at the top and TikTok “ad breaks” in the feed. Twitter now has Clubhouse at the top. Etc.

Instagram isn’t dead, but it does appear to be doomed. At the moment all it does it buy them a bit of time to find a way out, which they almost certainly won’t (as they’ve had a longer period to do so already).

WhatsApp isn't dead, but it isn't really monetisable. We'll see how Telegram Premium goes - personally i have it, but i doubt many people are willing to pay for a chat app with tons of free alternatives.

I'd be very willing to pay for a good chat app.

But if Facebook turned around and would say "hey if you all start paying us we can drop the whole evil thing" then yeah they'll get my middle finger. They just have lost my trust.

In Asia, Line seems to be doing well selling stickers which I guess can be a way to monetize a chat app.

Have you ever used Line? It’s the most privacy-invasive app I’ve used after FB. Constantly asks for access to location, contact book, photos etc. Line is mostly popular in Thailand, outside its very much Telegram and WA.

Line is a Japanese company, and as such it is THE messaging app in Japan, it is absolutely everywhere here.

> Constantly asks for access to location, contact book, photos etc.

a) Isn't that reasonable for a chat app? I mean, contact book, photos, location are all things that are likely part of the fabric of your chats with others?

b) It might ask for permission, but does it stop working if you deny permission? (I genuinely don't know since I'm not a user). If it doesn't prevent you from chatting, I don't think this is a strong argument.

I'm happy to pay for chat, just not for Telegram. I'd absolutely pay for Signal.

You can donate to Signal if you want to support them. In the settings menu there's an option to give a one-time or monthly donation.

You can donate to Signal one-time or monthly. They make it very easy with Apple Pay.

I'm genuinely curious, what are the reasons you wouldn't pay for Telegram? Is that only a matter of preference, or does Telegram have some critical issues?

Instagram is moribund. People's accounts are being stolen left and right, users' feeds are full of unasked-for shit, and "stories" are an absolute mess.

Facebook and its properties are dead. Good riddance.

TikTok is next, of course. Just ask Vine.

I see that they have raised the price of the Oculous Rift.

Daft move unless it isn't sustainable or they want to phase it out.

The original product isn't dead or dying. Maybe in 20 years.

This is a good point. For a company this big, the difference between the 2nd derivative and the 1st derivative can be many years.

Ig definitely on its way out

Reply on news.ycombinator.com