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Meta preps new social app
- firekvz 3y agoSo they are copying twitter now, I guess the circle of the internet has been completed, or maybe they after they fail this they will take a shoot on copying vbulletin/ipb forums from 2007 again?
- aloisdg 3y agobring back slow paced forum
- romanovcode 3y agoI loved those forums.
- RobotToaster 3y agoThey'll have a gopher clone next.
- ssss11 3y agoNah, irc client
- pavlov 3y agoMeta does have Workplace which is sort of like IRC + forums for corporations dressed up in the Facebook UI.
- implements 3y agoIsn’t this exactly what you’d expect to happen given Twitter has become a raging dumpster fire and Meta has enough networking effect to get a Twitter clone off the ground? File under: “Obvious things to do when you think about it”, really.
- wyclif 3y agoTwitter is "a raging dumpster fire" only for Space Man Bad people motivated by politics. For the rest of us, it's actually better than it's ever been, especially if you're like me and living outside of North America. It's snappier and more open than Twitter 1.0, and it's not banning people at the behest of the FBI.
- Kye 3y agoSpace Man: good Car Man: so-so Twitter Man: bad But Twitter was already a pit before he bought it. He fired all the people who held the line on its ongoing degradation, so it's getting worse.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago>He fired all the people who held the line on its ongoing degradation, so it's getting worse. What's actually different about it other than it loads faster and the For You feed is good now?
- Kye 3y agoIt loads no faster for me. The For You feed is worse for me. Top replies to posts I do want to see are consistently more hostile. These used to fall to the bottom or behind a filter click like they should.
- whywhywhywhy 3y agoThe speed increases were mostly for non-us. I dunno my for you used to just be American politics drama, tiresome to read as a non-American. Now it’s generated from my following interests.
- edpichler 3y ago> The decentralized app is built on the back of Instagram but will be compatible with some other apps like Mastodon. This can be interesting.
- avian 3y agoIt's step 1) of the scenario outlined in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33545541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33545541
- burn_cycle 3y agoIt doesn't even have to be this convoluted. They can just do what they did with email. Step one, wait until they have the vast majority of users, then due to spam/'problematic' content, algorithmically block the vast majority of other instances from interacting with theirs.
- ssss11 3y agoEmbrace etc etc extinguish
- senttoschool 3y agoMaybe Meta is trying to follow the model of Chinese tech companies. * Copy what works * Build re-usable internal systems so you can quickly go from prototypes to millions of users * Internal competition where teams are trying to create the same product and outdo other internal teams Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that Meta can successfully copy Chinese companies. One major reason is that software developers in the US are significantly more expensive so you have to be more strategic. Chinese companies are dominating in social apps. TikTok is just the start. https://hbr.org/2022/02/how-bytedance-became-the-worlds-most-valuable-startup https://hbr.org/2022/02/how-bytedance-became-the-worlds-most...
- mikro2nd 3y agoAnd what is that model?
- acatton 3y agoOne multi-usage phone app (chat, pay, navigate, …)
- mikro2nd 3y agoAh... so the one that myriad people have been chasing for at least 2 decades, now. I've lost count of the number of companies I've consulted to who were chasing that chimera. Good luck to them, I say, while gleefully taking money off them.
- sk0g 3y agoBuild a super app that contains an in-house variant of almost everything that becomes popular. WeChat for example.
- senttoschool 3y agoThis isn't the model I'm referring to. The new generation of Chinese software companies are more like the ByteDance model. https://hbr.org/2022/02/how-bytedance-became-the-worlds-most-valuable-startup https://hbr.org/2022/02/how-bytedance-became-the-worlds-most...
- asim 3y agoPublic networks are dead. We did it for two decades and now people need to go back to something more real and private. Social networks in the current form are just attention seeking. We've been trained to say things that will garner likes and retweets. I welcome text and chat, maybe even voice to text but not in the public form. Closed networks only now.
- threeseed 3y agoFrom Facebook's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results: DAUs were 2.00 billion on average for December 2022, an increase of 4% year-over-year. So I think public networks still seem far from dead.
- elcomet 3y agoFacebook is a private network.
- berkes 3y agoFacebook has a private network; WhatsApp. WhatsApp is omnipresent in many geographies - but not so much in the US, hence it's often overlooked.
- johnchristopher 3y agoFor a pedantic definition of private.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y agoThe precise definition being that it's private because you need to create an account so they can more accurately violate your privacy.
- jasode 3y ago>Facebook is a private network. You're getting sidetracked by the word "private" instead of looking at the contextual meaning of the conversation people are having: When grandparent poster (asim) wrote: >"and now people need to go back to something more real and private." asim meant "private"=="less-visible-more-intimate-group". You're talking about "private"=="walled-garden". The threeseed's reply of "So I think public networks still seem far from dead" is responding to asim's usage of "private" and not yours.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y agoI'm sure it won't be a horrible privacy-violating, mental illness-inducing mess. Meta would never do that.
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- KoftaBob 3y agoTheir choice to make the app "compatible with Mastodon" (uses the ActivityPub protocol and is basically a huge Mastodon instance) reminds me of the famous Microsoft "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" model. Not sure that Extinguish part is going to work though, considering AP/Mastodon are open source protocols/platforms and easily forkable.
- seba_dos1 3y agoXMPP hasn't been extinguished by Google, but it did suffer quite a but.
- lou1306 3y ago> Not sure that Extinguish part is going to work though, considering AP/Mastodon are open source protocols/platforms and easily forkable. That's not really a safeguard against "extinguishing". When you become the first mover, your extensions to the protocol/platform drive out competitors that cannot afford to interoperate with you. Actually, it may be pretty easy for a Meta-owned AP instance to drive out a lot of competitors. It definitely won't have the space/compute/bandwidth constraints of the average instance, and can work around most protocol warts by just throwing money at them. At the same time, federating with it might have a huge cost for a small instance.
- iLoveOncall 3y agoSounds a lot like... Facebook?
- raverbashing 3y agoAh yes but they alienated most young people by letting the boomers go crazy in there
- smokel 3y agoI am actually quite positive about this. Instagram is great for visual artists, but its extreme focus on images (and short videos) seems to favour shallow ideas. Text seems more appropriate to my likings.
- monetus 3y agoI think it makes a lot of sense to try this now and that it could be a good platform to push the protocol. My hunch is that this will help mastodon, and maybe hurt twitter's ad revenue if not their user count. A lot of hate for meta properties, but tying it into meta is a network effect mastodon doesn't have, but will tangentially now. I feel like if this goes well, it'll be good for most of the other social networks.
- nih0 3y agoone twitter is already bad enough for my mental health
- laratied 3y agoI have tried a few times but I can't last more than 2 weeks on twitter without deleting it. Even people I have enormous respect for intellectually end up coming off as unfunny comedians, obnoxious and vapid performance artists or political hacks.
- patatino 3y agoI am waiting for the day they integrate something like this in whatsapp. Welcome to your new social media app 2bn users. Would be the first social media account my parents have
- ssss11 3y agoShh don’t speak too loud they may be listening
- ignoramous 3y agoIt isn't a Twitter clone built for the sake of it. This is Meta wanting data for its LLMs aware of the latest trends and news-worthy events as they happen. Probably generate ad videos and banners on-the-fly, even?
- senttoschool 3y agoI'm pretty sure they started this project because they saw weakness in Elon's Twitter and wanted to pounce on the opportunity. Then the LLMs got popular and maybe they think they can use the content for LLMs too.
- v4dok 3y agoI want to offer a counterpoint to the current consensus in the comments from (my) real-world interactions. In many countries outside of US, Twitter is occupied by a minority audience which is usually in its own bubble. Instagram is much more popular especially in Millenials who are now in the age group where they start to be more politically active and less motivated by the "pure entertainement" side of the social media. Facebook, is dead for them in terms of engagement because its the "old people" place and discoverability is quite bad outside of groups. I know many people who use Instagram for social/policy commentary in their stories, and its very inefficient because its one-way. Pictures do not allow for proper discussion or easy discoverability of comments. Even tiktok has better interaction via duets and pushing up new content all the time but conversation is limited. I believe that instagram is mainstream enough to entice this group into a forum-like experience and drive insane engagement. Currently, if you are not traveling or doing some kind of beauty influencing, instagram is dead and its successor (tiktok) is limited to short videos. There is a legit market for more long-form/term discussion place in that (very important) age group outside of the US especially. I am bullish on the offer, especially since Twitter seems to be prioritising US.
- ulfw 3y agoFrankly Groups should not be part of Facebook. Facebook is/should be the 'friends' network. Sharing things among a select group of known people. Instagram is the public/open network. Share pictures and reels with whoever wants to see them. Groups fits into that more as you rarely have a group among your own friend set, but rather among a group of random individuals with similar interests. Meta has it upside down.
- petesergeant 3y ago> Currently, if you are not traveling or doing some kind of beauty influencing, instagram I dunno, it’s a nice little closed network for me. I see updates from friends and family, only they see my updates, Insta has gotten pretty good at surfacing the cat videos I like to watch. I don’t want to see the opinions of the general public or the political opinions of my friends (I’d much rather get both from professional journalists), and neither show up on my Instagram
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- schmorptron 3y agoTumblr said they'd work towards ActivityPub a couple of months back as well, I wonder if that work will ship at some point soon. As much as you have to be skeptical with anything to to with facebook, I still remain cautiously optimistic about this. Although the kind of content you can follow on tumblr is infinitely more fun than on instagram imo :)
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- h1fra 3y agoWhile I don't believe it will be as huge as Twitter, and that Twitter users won't migrate there. This have the potential to do it well for Instagrammer that wants a new medium but in a platform that is not for shitposting and memes. However when you think about it, it's just Facebook all over again :D
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- lakomen 3y agoSo Mastodon with Meta censorship. They really hate boobs over at Meta. Women show off their cameltoes and boobs, there's even hardcore porn that's not being removed despite being reported on Instagram. But if you dare to post "Nice boobs" when the poster starts off to show her nice boobs, it's "harassment".
- chatmasta 3y agoI'm no fan of Meta, but I'm hesitant to write off their chance of success at this, considering how successfully they took market share from snapchat with their stories product.
- yosito 3y agoThe thing I don't like about mainstream social networks is that they control not just what you say and what you see, but also how you say it and how you see it. Meta says we're all gonna share our thoughts and opinions via short texts posts on Instagram now, so that's what *we're gonna do. Don't like it? Well, too bad, because that's how the app works now. Oh, and by the way, you can post whatever you want, unless the algorithms decide it's against the community standards, and even then, only the posts of upstanding digital citizens that promote the narrative they want will actually be shown to others. And literally all of your online interactions are going through a few tech companies now. You don't have freedom of speech, expression or even thought, unless you comply with the Meta/Alphabet approved narrative. *There is always the option to not participate if you prefer to sit in a closet with your Raspberry Pi.
- classified 3y agoThat's what you get for making yourself dependent on a megacorp's "free" service.
- heresie-dabord 3y ago> you can post whatever you want, unless the algorithms decide it's against the community standards To the extent that social media is like a village (a medium-to-large number of people expressing themselves), there have always been community standards in any society. > mainstream social networks People who sufficiently resent aspects of broader society can find smaller groups. These smaller groups will themselves have community standards. The expectation of unfettered freedom of speech is at best naive, especially when the things people say incite violence.
- yosito 3y ago> there have always been community standards in any society. When Meta says "community standards" they aren't actually community standards at all. Meta unilaterally decides what their "community standards" are. I've had posts about lighting a campfire for my family, and showing off vegetables from my garden flagged as "violating community standards". We're not even getting into sex, religion and politics, which I also believe are areas of life that we need to be able to have open conversations about in public forums, rather than having an unaccountable organization unilaterally decide for us what is right and wrong. > The expectation of unfettered freedom of speech is at best naive, especially when the things people say incite violence. Given the tendency for violence to be associated with calls for free speech, I understand how you could assume that I'm talking about speech that incites violence. But actually, I'm talking about much more innocuous things like talking about non-traditional relationship styles, alternative lifestyles, body positivity, open medical data, thought experiments and well thought out challenges to the status quo.
- AlexandrB 3y ago> There are currently no set plan for monetization being shared, which could mean no ads to start? In which case, expect the emphasis to be on an organic social strategy. I wonder if, collectively, people will ever stop falling for this kind of bait & switch.
- jtode 3y agoMy first take was "They are also, along with Bluesky, attempting to grab the Twitter sceptre of power." There is a tidbit in there about "compatibility" with other networks, including Mastodon; I wonder if their implementation of the protocol will include Mastodon reaching into their garden. If it does, I might believe they have learned something.
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]
- bilekas 3y agoI really can't see the point in this. > Tagline: “Instagram for your thoughts.” That will be a hard no from me thanks.
- ipsum2 3y agoWhat's the point of posting this? You may not be their target demographic. No one's forcing you to use it. If I see a post about a new Lisp dialect (something I have no interest in), commenting "That will be a hard no from me thanks." is a waste of time and space.
- bilekas 3y ago> If I see a post about a new Lisp dialect (something I have no interest in) But I am interested in social media apps, its hard not to be these days. I just don't see the point from Meta's point of view, apart from more data collection maybe, and I don't see the point from the users point when Mastodon and Twitter are doing this, with arguably more respect for their users than Meta.
- threeseed 3y agoTwitter is valued at ~$10b and still generating ad revenue. There is demand for a Twitter clone that is closer to what it was before Musk joined. Therefore as a pure business opportunity it makes a lot of sense.
- cheeze 3y agoAn opinon on what the OP of the comment thinks about it? That's the joy of HN. You get the folks who are bullish on a 'new' idea, and those who aren't.
- ipsum2 3y agoThere's no explanation about why the OP thinks the way he does. If there was some interesting commentary or question, that would be worth reading about.
- ipsum2 3y agoThe people who care about decentralization and like Meta/Facebook are two separate circles, but its interesting that they're supposedly building on ActivityPub.
- raspyberr 3y agoLike how they built their chat on XMPP and then rugpulled it away?
- seba_dos1 3y agoFacebook only had a XMPP gateway for their own chat service to let you use it with an XMPP client. You could never communicate with other servers from Facebook or vice-versa. It was Google who actually bait-and-switched with federated XMPP.
- tazjin 3y agoGearing up for a classic EEE move, probably.
- seydor 3y agoIsn't instagram twitter-like already? So it seems they want to capitalize on the Mastodon crowd and make a centralized version that works well. At least they should revert back to 140-200 character limit. Twitters extended tweets is a mistake and are degrading it
- cheeze 3y agoYes and no. IG requires that you post an image/video. This is their Twitter clone. To me it's an obvious move. Try to move in when Twitter is in an odd transitional period. Not saying I have any interest in using it, but from a strategy standpoint it makes complete sense.
- jonathanstrange 3y agoCouldn't they just remove the requirement to post an image/video?
- jonathanstrange 3y agoNo, thanks. Facebook/Meta has already done enough harm and I rarely meet anyone younger than me who still uses it. People tend to not like it.
- jasoncartwright 3y agoThis looks to be based around Instagram, which certainly does have young users
- jonathanstrange 3y agoYes, if they carefully hide they're not Meta/Facebook it might work, since people generally don't read EULAs.
- threeseed 3y agoMeta runs the world's most highly regarded adverting platform which is already populated with the campaigns of almost every brand on the planet. Brands already have limited ad spend with the global economy the way it is. And the fact that this will be a new channel that will be highly effective, work with their existing tools and require no additional effort will be compelling. And that will extinguish what little revenue Musk hasn't fettered away. Twitter is finished.