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Comment by ragmondo | Hacker News Reader

I disagree fundamentally with the message xkcd is saying here. Instagram, facebook, myspace etc all gained traction as basically setting up a website or wordpress site was just not practical at one time. They all give the impression that it's a practical and reasonable alternative. And that's what 99.9% of their users think.

And then of course the funding starts to dry up and the accountants start needing to see some hard $$$$ income. And that's when the ToS start to "adapt" to enable aforementioned sites to monetize "their" content. Oh didn't you know ? It's not your website after all. Sorry ! And thanks for getting your friends on board too !!

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Instagram, and other social networks, are fundamentally different than wordpress sites in a number of important ways. 100 million users didn't join because it was an alternative to a blog.

Their funding didn't dry up. They raised a substantial round, and then were purchased by another company that had itself just raised billions of dollars. They didn't need money.

But they did want to make it. Because they're a business.

I'm not sure what your point is here.

Raising money or being bought doesn't give them the revenue streams they need to turn themselves into a real business with a sustainable future. They could have carried on burning through capital sure, but that could only go on for so long and ultimately some sort of direction change was inevitable, whether it was asking users to pay, selling advertising or whatever.

They didn't need money...

-- Huh?

They don't need money. The need to return money to investors.

Big difference.

Here, they are having a garage sale (of other people's stuff) to pay the mortgage on the house they luxuriously live in. Of course, they bought the supplies and furnishings for their house with money from investors. That's why they are trying to steal what is in the garage ans sell it on ebay to marketers/ =D

"They raised a substantial round, and then were purchased by another company that had itself just raised billions of dollars. They didn't need money."

How dare those investors demand a return on their investment!!

"Instagram, facebook, myspace etc all gained traction as basically setting up a website or wordpress site was just not practical at one time"

Really, not practical? My mother had a personal website long before Myspace. My friends in middle school had personal web pages via AOL.

I suspect that the reason Myspace became popular was the social aspect, and the reason Facebook became popular was the combination of the social aspect and the fact that you had to log in to Facebook to see anyone's Facebook pages.

Yes, it is "not practical" for everyone to set up their own site. By "not practical", I mean a site that is easy to maintain and easy to disseminate information through. A website is not much of anything if it's not used.

I just think we should stop using Instagram as a noun. Facebook.com/instagram is a very reasonable name for it now. Anyone have any objections?

I disagree with your second sentence.

Anyone who can afford a device to take photos and an internet connection has had a lot of practical alternatives for creating their own website or photo sharing site.

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