Slashdot Mirror
How Many Snapchat Clones Does It Take For Facebook To Lose Its Self-Respect? (theguardian.com)
Alex Hern, writing for The Guardian: Over the past year, Facebook has shown an almost monomaniacal dedication to taking on Snapchat by importing its defining features wholesale into the company's own apps. Facebook Live has "masks" now (think Snapchat's Lenses). Instagram has geostickers (like Snapchat's location-aware stickers.) WhatsApp has "Status" (think Snapchat Stories). Instagram has "Stories" (think ... Snapchat stories). The latest fruit of Facebook's labours is Messenger Day -- "a way for you to share these photos and videos -- as they happen -- by adding to your Messenger Day, where many of your friends can view and reply to them". It's Snapchat Stories. Again. [...] Facebook has seen potential threats on the horizon before, but its chequebook has always been enough to ward off real danger: that's why it bought Instagram, that's why it bought WhatsApp, and that's why it tried to buy Snapchat. But it couldn't get the company's fiercely independent co-founder, Evan Spiegel, to sell. And now it's in uncharted waters, with a competitor stealing advertising revenue, desirable millennial users, and industry credibility, and with no obvious way to reverse that trend. Facebook's time at the top probably isn't up. But its self-respect deficit is going to take years to pay off.
Snap has filters and disappearing texts. Other than ads, there is no user or product data to mine unless they are breaking their own rules. The product is easily cloneable by Facebook, goliath of Internet with it's brethren of Google, Microsoft and others. Reminds me of... Groupon?
As described by a coworker: "Snap is the Uber of Twitter."
at least Twitter has data to mine, the product is still you... even with a character limit.
Facebook is big enough to get the Goliath media attack. Looks really like a Snap stock prop piece.
Though in FB's case, did they ever have it?
As long as these Appchat clones are appy app apps, they're all super appy! Stupid LUDDITES are too dumb to make appy apps like Appchat for Appbook!
Apps!
...it takes for google to release a new messaging app...
Bearing in mind what it is and what it does, self respect is obviously not high in Facebook's agenda.
Being a targeted demographic means that you are susceptible to advertising, peer pressure and fads. Therefore, a sucker to be parted from his/her money.
I finally killed my FB account when I swiped to the top of my contacts and a camera popped up.. wtf? Where'd this come from? Why is this trying to be snapchat?
And the "features" just kept coming until the messenger app was completely unusable. One false swipe and you were off in some app function you had no desire to use.
So... I ragequit social media. All of it. People who are important to me have my phone number. They can call or text.
You millennials can get the fuck off my lawn.
How does this make money, or motivate people to get out of bed in the morning?
I'm increasingly baffled and flummoxed by what people do with computers.
This does not matter, I guess thousands of 40+ yo people here on /. don't care about FB et al.
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Only one piece of software is allowed to have a given feature. In fact, forget about any software but the first to use the standard internet stack. They should all have to define their own protocols and figure out how to convince network device manufacturers to use their protocols. For that matter... Food? No two people should be allowed to eat the same food. All restaurants should have to come up with a completely new dish for every customer. Language? Everyone should come up with their own words.
Do you think the average teenager or soccer mom who uses these features actually cares who invented what first? They are not reading these stories, they are not concerned with abstract hand-wringing. They just care if the platform they use does that cute little trick where they can overlay a cat nose on their face in realtime. Facebook knows this. They are appropriately more concerned with their bottom line than with the opinion of tech journalists. I just don't see the point. Competitors in every industry copy each other and try to one-up each other. that's the whole point. If you feel you are losing ground to X competitor because they rolled out Y new feature, you're going to also roll out Y new feature and hopefully add Z innovation on top of it, and X competitor may copy Z new innovation back in return. Why single out the feature arms race of social media?
And now it's in uncharted waters, with a competitor stealing advertising revenue, desirable millennial users, and industry credibility, and with no obvious way to reverse that trend.
stealing /s
They care about their bottom line. Might as well call this article "Facebook is copying a competitor and it isn't going to matter, but I still want you to read this article sooooo here's an attention grabbing title".
A more interesting article is this one Tech's Ruling Class Casts a Big Shadow. If Facebook had done this while Snapchat was still a new startup - would Snapchat see any of the success it currently does?
Most of these unicorns are in the same advertising corral as Facebook and there's only so much feed to go around for these revenue hungry beasts. While Facebook has enough heft to reasonably fend for itself it's also got one of the biggest appetites. If Facebook can't swallow a big unicorn it'll try to stomp it to death.
Unless FB went on a hiring spree, they are probably just rerouting permanent workers that they hired long ago for their core features into these. And since Facebook has pretty much no competition on their core business segment itself, neglecting core features right now and for the past 2-3 years has probably taken no hit at all. They chose the best out of 2 options, and the one that makes their talent happier: They kept personnel on the pay-role by implementing a competing strategy, and kept handing out normal wages, in contrast to laying off no-longer-needed core periphery personnel by paying likely the same in severances.
Why would Facebook have wanted to throw money to the bin when they could (and did) manage to keep people on the pay-role longer. This is always a betetr roadmap than severances, and severances are not only a sign of bankruptcy - if they happen for no financial reason, they are a sign of bad management. And that is where the investor downward spiral starts.
We're talking about a corporation here. Self-respect is a concept that's for real people, not for fake ones.
A corporation would shit on itself, put a cherry on top and call it chocolate cake if someone paid it for doing so.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How much did "Alex Hern, writing for The Guardian" get paid by Snapchat to write that story? Companies copy features all the time, and certainly have done so in the field of software forever. I'm certainly no fan of Facebook, and deleted my account long ago, but why shouldn't Facebook do it? Wouldn't they be stupid not to add features their users might like? Is there only one car company making cars with intermittent wipers?
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
I played with Snapchat briefly and didn't see the appeal. Everything that it could do is already done better by other services like Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, Instagram, and so on. It was clunky and didn't really add any value to my online social experience.
Why are other companies trying to copy them? I don't get it.
Facebook Live has "masks" now (think Snapchat's Lenses).
More like Skype, Windows Live Messenger, and a half dozen other video chat clients I can think of? Snapchat didn't do it first (or even best.)
Instagram has geostickers (like Snapchat's location-aware stickers.)
More like the stickers available in every photo editor since the 90s? (Why is location-aware a feature - you're telling me it's a good thing that I can't use a sticker if I'm not in a specific physical location?)
WhatsApp has "Status" (think Snapchat Stories). Instagram has "Stories" (think ... Snapchat stories).
You mean like a Twitter feed, or heck even Facebook's Timeline view?
The latest fruit of Facebook's labours is Messenger Day -- "a way for you to share these photos and videos -- as they happen -- by adding to your Messenger Day, where many of your friends can view and reply to them". It's Snapchat Stories. Again.
More like your Facebook Timeline, but from Messenger.
Seriously, Snapchat is not the originator of these ideas, their only differentiator is that their stuff is auto-deleted after a given time. In fact you could easily argue the reverse, that Snapchat stories last 24 hours because they're trying to copy Twitter feeds, FB timelines, LinkedIn, etc.
A recursive sig
Can impart wisdom and truth
Call proc signature()
I'd say bringing this article to Slashdot is a bit like bringing a drag queen to a sports bar to talk about why new wig shop on the block is much better than the the old one.
Massive bitching in vain.
Implying that Facebook ever had self respect...
Advertisers don't like millennials, they have no money. Also: Facebook makes money, Snapchat still doesn't.
[quote]Facebook Live has "masks" now (think Snapchat's Lenses)[/quote]
Yes, thanks, that clears everything up for me. I totally know what "Snapchat's Lenses" are.
The social media buzzword generator for whatever awesome new feature thing-a-ma-bob of the day is driving me nuts. Can I use my Giphy-powered Slack API to Mask a Snapchat Lense on all this stupid horseshit?
Facebook has no self-respect. What Facebook has is a radical, even toxic, overdose of hubris.
Facebook exists to take advantage of their users. That's their entire business model. They're good at it, too.
Yes, currently snapchat doesn't have much to monetize (at least not if they respect their promised privacy and ephemeral pictures).
BUT snapchat has still something valuable: it has *USERS*.
Facebook might have tons of them, but they are mostly users who stayed around from before.
First there was Geocities, then there was MySpace, then there was Facebook... Zuckerberg knows the trend, he knows that Facebook isn't going to last forever.
That's why he's been keeping an eye open on the social network market, in order to see in advance where the next trend is going so his company manages to stay relevant even if the crowd of users on Facebook gets older.
WhatsApp got popular, it menaced to become "the next facebook" just like Facebook managed to replace myspace... so Facebook bought them
(now new WhatsApp users are in the end new users to the big goliath, and even if old age and attrition evefntually phases facebook out, the company will still relevant).
Same with Instagram : it got popular, Facebook phagocyted it.
Now comes Snapchat's. It the latest popular social app among the youngest generation (those who aren't part of some virtual social network yet. And whose parents and grand parants are on Facebook/WhatsApp/Instagram, so they definitely don't want to be on those... So they pick up the latest kid on the block which seem to be snapchat).
So even if snapchat if far from being a dominant platform now, it is still gaining momentum and that's were the new users are going to...
(And there are signs : it's got its first rising celebrities, its first scandals, etc.)
but Facebook has no way to buy that new "Facebook replacement wannabe".
They don't see an immediate way to avoid becoming the "newly replaced MySpace".
It's not a question of whether Snapchat can be economically stable - and thus if there's enough data to mine right now.
It's a question of where the new young users are going to - and how Zuckerberg's company can manage to stay relevant and not get eventually replaced one day the way MySpace was.
So for now Facebook is banking on aping as much feature as possible in a bet to remain attractive.
and hoping than they'll be able to run Snap inc into the ground before it becomes sustainable enough and before it has attracted to many of the new "not yet on some social network" teens.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Maybe they should've promoted their Poke app better. IIRC, it was out around the same time that Snapchat premiered, and had similar features (view once photo/video/text).
...
As nobody respects that crappy site in the first place, but trolls and idiots ;)