Instagram has become qvc 2.0 | Hacker News Reader

Instagram has become qvc 2.0

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35 pointsohjeez8 comments

The rapid decline of Instagram from a meaningful platform to connect with my friends and family to a wasteland of ads and influencers gives me confidence that Meta will eventually die.

The company does not understand how to build products that delight people. Every one of their major verticals was either stolen, copied, or purchased. The organization hasn't learned how to delight users at scale.

They are excellent at monetizing social networks. Once they have a product and an audience they know how to extract dollars and eventually squeeze it dry.

Rather than building a synergistic relationship with their users they've opted to become parasite of our attention.

That’s my perception as well but I believe it is flawed. I don’t work at Facebook but I imagine their business is run off the vast data they collect from users. Somehow, the increase of ads must be increasing revenue in a more material way than it loses users.

I don’t think Meta is incompetent and they understand the knobs they can dial in better than anyone else.

I personally think that it's very unlikely that Meta will die anytime soon just because they make mediocre products. Look at Microsoft. Windows is still mediocre but it still sells albeit indirectly. Meta is driven by data and social connections, not by products. As long as they have a foothold on those, the company would survive.

What's the non-mediocre alternative to Windows, that allows you to choose your hardware (i.e. not macOS) and that is usable by everybody (i.e. not Linux)?

Not sure this applies to Meta, though...

I don’t believe it’s possible to create a non-mediocre product of such complexity, especially if you need to support a variety of hardware. Without this requirement, iOS comes closest, though the UI discoverability is often abysmal.

And Linux is mostly good (and best, depending on hardware) now if you don’t need specific unsupported software.

iOS doesn't even get off the starting blocks for serious software. Can you score movies on an iPad? Can you develop console games? Can you use Blender? Houdini? DaVinci Resolve? Other industry standards?

Even Linux lets you use Blender, Houdini and DaVinci Resolve natively.

Arguably, YouTube was "QVC 2.0" with sponsored unboxings and toothless reviews.

For me my instagram went from being a place to share photos/videos with other creatives to my friends and family sending memes and videos they find funny. It's actually allowed me to remain connected to old coworkers from as far back as 7-8 years ago.

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