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Comment by system16 | Hacker News Reader

It's fascinating how reactionary and directionless Instagram and Facebook have become. Instagram in particular has become Frankenstein's monster over the last few years, pathetically trying to reproduce functionality from other apps. The latest cloning of TikTok's feed is almost embarrassing. It's a testament to how deep the lack of a creative culture at Meta runs.

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My impression back in the day was that Facebook bought Instagram for the same reason. They couldn't get the younger crowd to stay on Facebook. It's more of a testament about to how much youth are not interested in living their lives on their parent's platforms.

That was my impression too, that and buying potential competitors.

This was exactly my experience in a dev productivity team that had fulfilled its purpose well enough.

It’s not a lack of creativity, but a lack of mission/vision/true north.

Basically they’re flailing about trying to find something that sticks. If they can’t they’ll go the way of yahoo.

It's sad that they keep trying to bolt this functionality onto existing apps. Why not leave Instagram and Facebook alone as functional tools with purposes -- posting statuses, photos, keeping in touch with friends and family -- and then create a separate TikTok competitor? And a separate Snap competitor? Is it just because FB's awful awful Snap clone crashed and burned and nobody used it, so they're afraid to launch a new app these days?

Because you have to start shrinking when you acknowledge this.

It’s a form of loss avoidance, I think. That or trading the known for starting something new.

> and then create a separate TikTok competitor? And a separate Snap competitor?

They did, it was called Threads and no one used it.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/17/instagram-will-shut-down-i...

Oh my. I was referring to the earliest attempt, [Poke](https://techcrunch.com/2012/12/21/facebook-poke-app/).

Later, there was [Slingshot](https://www.engadget.com/2014-06-17-facebook-slingshot.html).

And now Threads.

I guess my original comment was unfair -- Facebook does try to launch clone apps. They just don't work!

> It's a testament to how deep the lack of a creative culture at Meta runs.

This seems to be it. Meta only "innovates" to copy competitors. WhatsApp was a threat and was bought. Same for Instagram. Snapchat couldn't be bought, so it became stories and is now part of every product Meta owns.

TikTok is the latest threat, and history repeats itself. Instead of creating a superior product that people want to use, Meta is sacrificing Instagram to replicate TikTok's every feature (including finally paying creators).

What creative culture? A billion user beast does not know, need or want creative or culture.

It wants profits and more of them, every quarter.

TikTok's only 'innovation' is paying billions of dollars to teenagers to create meme videos. Instagram isn't losing to TikTok's 'creative culture', it's losing to American elite's favorite move - throwing money at a problem until everyone else quits, at which point you give talks and write books about how it was due to innovation, freedom and democracy, oh and LGBTQ+ or whatever the term is nowadays.

Source: know a couple of people who could barely scrape by on Instagram/youtube, switched to TikTok and are all of a sudden making more money than me. The infinite money faucet at TikTok will soon run dry and it'll become just another shit social media platform, like all the rest.

>TikTok's only 'innovation' is paying billions of dollars to teenagers to create meme videos

TikTok has at least done three innovative things. One is the frictionless sign in that doesn't require an account, secondly the well done video editing tools and most importantly abstracting away the social graph.

And on the finance site this doesn't check out either. TikTok is on track to triple revenue this year alone and top creators generally make more money from outside sponsors and deals than from the company itself. Of all the social media site TikTok arguably chips in the least amount of money themselves.

> Of all the social media site TikTok arguably chips in the least amount of money themselves.

How do you know that?

hank green video on tiktok creator fund: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAZapFzpP64

article recap: https://www.tubefilter.com/2022/01/24/hank-green-tiktok-crea...

I would also say spending billions on user acquisition is a bit of an innovation too because they did it and it paid off.

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