Tag: Instagram

Weekly readings

Weekly reading – 17th September 2022

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly reading – 17th September 2022

What I wrote last week

Relocation from Vietnam to the US with a cat

Business

JPMorgan Chase acquires payments fintech Renovite to help it battle Stripe and Block. Incumbent financial institutions are sparing no coins to invest in their technology stacks. Capital One has always touted itself as a technology company. JPMorgan Chase has plowed so much money into fintech that the long-time CEO Jamie Dimon is under pressure to justify the investments. But that’s the name of the game. Any company that wants to compete in finance in the future will need to put money where its mouth is

Goldman’s Apple Card business has a surprising subprime problem. Given the lack of disclosure from either Goldman Sachs and Apple on earnings calls, it’s helpful to finally to see some performance metrics of the Apple Card portfolio. The headlines are that more than 25% of the overall outstandings is from folks with FICO lower than 660 and the loss rates are among the highest in the industry. The article did well to note that Apple Card is a young business; therefore, its loss rates may not be fully comparable to other fully established ones. I’d also love to learn about the share of balance from Apple purchases. My theory is that since a lot of people use the Apple Card to break their payment into installments, the lower FICO crowd is responsible for the bulk of such payment plans’ balance. Is that necessarily a good thing? I don’t know. But if these “bad apples” are barred from holding an Apple Card ever again, whoever is left will be good loyal customers.

Apple’s Next Big Thing: A Business Model Change. Apple’s executive team doesn’t get enough credit for their long-term vision, the ability to pivot & execute and their relentless patience.

($) How a CEO Rescued a Big Bet on Big Oil; ‘There Were a Lot of Doubters’. Vicki Hollub sounds quite a businesswoman, an operator and an executive!

How to blow $85 million in 11 months: The inside story of Airlift’s crash. Another one on a long list of examples of how companies collapse due to the “move fast and break things” mantra.

($) Instagram Stumbles in Push to Mimic TikTok, Internal Documents Show. If I were Meta investors, I would be worried. The company commits huge investments, HUGEEEEEEE, to the Metaverse, a concept championed by the CEO which, in my opinion, is very very far from reality and of course, monetization. Its business model built upon surveillance tracking is under pressure from Apple’s privacy-centric, though controversial, policies. Meanwhile, Reels, which is one of the highest priorities, is no match against TikTok. According to the Chief Operating Officer of Instagram, Reel’s differentiation comes from the ease of sharing content. I mean, that’s a very weak point. “Instagram users cumulatively are spending 17.6 million hours a day watching Reels, less than one-tenth of the 197.8 million hours TikTok users spend each day on that platform, according to a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal that summarizes internal Meta research. The internal document showed that nearly one-third of Reels videos are created on another platform, usually TikTok, and include a watermark or border identifying them as such. Meta said it “downranks” these videos, meaning it shows them to smaller audiences to reduce the incentives for those that post them, but they continue to proliferate. For Reels users, the result is that often they are shown videos recycled from another, more popular platform. The portion of Instagram users who think the company “cares about” them fell from nearly 70% in 2019 to roughly 20% earlier this summer. On the question of whether the product was “good for the world,” the score fell from more than 60% in 2019 to slightly over 45%.”

Other stuff I find interesting

Good enough. On Twitter and business websites, you see all kinds of people trying to predict the performance of a stock or a business. Some do it with a breath-taking degree of condescension and over-confidence. At work, the phrase “data-driven” which refers to the practice of using historical data to back up a course of action is just overused and bores me to death. Instead, I like what Morgan proposed. Make all the predicting and forecasting good enough and then spend the unused bandwidth on something else. I don’t know, like understanding the industry, the customers or what is holding the company back and fixing it.

Three Big Things: The Most Important Forces Shaping the World. A great perspective by Morgan Housel

Shanghai emerges as China’s semiconductor highland. “In total, the market size of Shanghai’s semiconductor industry reached 250 billion yuan (US$36.95 billion) in 2021, or about a quarter of China’s total, according to Wu. The city has attracted over one thousand key industry players and over 40 per cent of the country’s chip talent, Wu added. Shanghai’s relative success in cultivating a big local semiconductor industry has been partly helped by the city’s preferential policies. To attract semiconductor businesses, talent and investors to the city, the Shanghai authority has rolled out a series of preferential measures, from government subsidies to tax breaks. Even during the city’s draconian lockdown in April and May, the local authority gave priority to semiconductor businesses to resume their production and operations as soon as possible.”

The Oldest Restaurant in Kabul: Where Tradition Trumps Rockets. “During the four decades of war that Afghanistan has been through, the Broot family never left the country. They kept their restaurant open and continued serving chainakito the hungry people of Kabul as rockets rained on their neighborhood, bombs exploded, and regimes changed.“

Discipline is Destiny: 25 Habits That Will Guarantee You Success

Stats

Indonesia, Brazil, Ghana and Suriname accounted for 80% of tropical forest loss due to industrial mining between 2000 and 2019

Top-Ranked US Colleges All Cost More Than $55,000 a Year. BEFORE room and board.

U.S. mortgage interest rates top 6% for first time since 2008

Source: Twitter
Weekly readings

Weekly reading – 5th June 2021

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly reading – 5th June 2021

Business

Sweetgreen Bet Big on Naomi Osaka. Then It Doubled Down. As the world becomes more divided nowadays, celebrity endorsements come with a risk that companies have to make uncomfortable decisions at times. This is one of those moments for Sweetgreen and personally I am happy that they support Osaka.

Self-Driving Cars Could Be Decades Away, No Matter What Elon Musk Said. If a company or an executive claims that their company’s bright future relies on self-driving cars, take it with a big grain of salt and ask a lot of questions because that future is highly uncertain and can be decades away.

Apple’s new App Store guidelines put scammers and bounty hunters on notice. Apple just did themselves and almost everyone else a favor by being more detailed and specific about their App Store guidelines. A major criticism of Apple and the App Store is that their guidelines are too ambiguous and not enforced equally. That’s a fair criticism and since Apple wants to hold a complete unchallenged power over the App Store, they can’t expect that we expect nothing, but perfect from them. I doubt this latest development will quell much the frustration by developers, but it’s a positive step in the right direction

An interesting chat between Kara Swisher and Margrethe Vestager on issues such as a global tax, court cases against big techs and potential remedies towards the oversized dominance of the likes of Apple.

Netflix debuted an online shop that sells merchandise related to their hit shows such as Lupin. This is a natural extension of their business. When some of their shows are fan favorites and garner enough following, why not capitalizing on such popularity? After all, that’s what Disney does. You watch Marvel or Disney movies and visit the theme parks for other experiences. I don’t think this is so much about being on level terms with Disney. Instead, this is about generating more margin and revenue.

What I found interesting

Jordan, Russell, Kareem, even the King of Pop — the astonishing mentors who shaped Kobe Bryant. Everyone wants to be like Kobe, but are they ready for the sacrifices and solidarity like Kobe was? Are they willing to go above and beyond for their obsession like Kobe?

Eddy Cue On Why Spatial Audio Is a Game-Changer

Shedding More Light on How Instagram Works. According to this post from Instagram, it uses a lot of data (they call it “signals”) to determine what content you get to see. There are two sides of this. On one side, it can be convenient and good that you get to see more of what you like. On the other hand, it means that Instagram or Facebook knows a lot about you. Had Facebook had a better track record in terms of privacy in the past, it wouldn’t have been a concern. The reality is that I am not sure users really use Facebook’s platforms because they are trustworthy. It’s likely because Facebook owns the biggest platforms in the world and users only use them out of convenience. Nonetheless, appreciate posts like this one

The World’s Northernmost Town Is Changing Dramatically

How the wealthiest in America avoid paying income taxes

In 2011, a year in which his wealth held roughly steady at $18 billion, Bezos filed a tax return reporting he lost money — his income that year was more than offset by investment losses. What’s more, because, according to the tax law, he made so little, he even claimed and received a $4,000 tax credit for his children.

Stats that may interest you

Solar makes up 4.5% of the US’s electricity, up from 0.1% in 2010

Passenger EV sales are set to increase sharply in the next few years, rising from 3.1 million in 2020 to 14 million in 2025.

Business, Technology

Antitrust hearing with 4 big-tech CEOs

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Antitrust hearing with 4 big-tech CEOs

A disappointing hearing

Today, the long anticipated hearing by The House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law which features Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg, the four powerful CEOs of big tech companies, took place. Suffice to say, I am not surprised at what transpired, but I am pretty disappointed. I don’t think that there is an objective or a desirable outcome from this hearing. While Democratic officials focused more on the issue at hand which concerns antitrust practices by these companies, their Republican colleagues, in particular Representative Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan, were more interested in an entirely issue: alleged bias and censorship of conservative views on social media. Jim Jordan even compared Apple’s famous 1984 ads campaign to the so-called cancel culture almost 40 years later! Ranking Member Sensenbrenner even mistook Facebook with Twitter when he tried to question Mark Zuckerberg on Twitter’s decision to temporarily suspect Don Jr’s account. You don’t need to spend time on the hearing, but you can get some idea on the quality of this event based on those incidents.

Notwithstanding the difference in pointed questions, every lawmaker in this hearing did more grandstanding than listening. The 5-minute rule is there to ensure that every lawmaker has a chance to ask questions and that witnesses don’t digress. However, the rule’s side effect is that lawmakers don’t wait for witnesses to answer. Instead, they push their own assumptions/allegations on witnesses or just restrict complicated matters to a “Yes/No” question. If this hearing is to uncover how these CEOs approach competition, why is it that they weren’t allowed to talk more and elaborate?

The format of the hearing needs to change in order to yield results. I have a few thoughts in mind on what can be implemented:

  • Every question at a hearing should stick to a topic. Anyone who violates this rule twice should be kicked out of a hearing. For example, Jim Jordan today didn’t ask questions on anti-competition. He threw allegations towards the witnesses on alleged bias to conservatives. So did several other GOPs. How do those questions belong to the Antitrust conversation at hand?
  • Every lawmaker should have 5-10 minutes, but there should only 5-10 questions allowed. A limit on the number of questions can help ensure the quality of questions, give witnesses more time to elaborate and reduce grandstanding. Many issues are complicated and take some explanations.
  • Before a hearing, questions should be compiled in advance on a portal/website and witnesses must answer in writing before appearing in front of lawmakers. Written answers offer witnesses space and time to elaborate and remove the constraints of time. During hearings, lawmakers can just build off of the written answers submitted in advance.
  • Similarly, there should be a collection of follow-up questions that are answered after a hearing.

Not every acquisition of a competitor violates antitrust laws

Facebook and Google were grilled today on their previous acquisitions: Facebook on Instagram, WhatsApp and Google on DoubleClick. I was baffled by this line of question. Take Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram several years ago as an example.

When Facebook paid $1 billion to acquire Instagram in 2012, nobody could be 100% sure that it would be what it is today. At the time of the acquisition, Facebook was already a big player primed for its IPO and heavily invested while even though it was growing fast, Instagram had around 30 million users, generated no revenue and was valued at $500 million. The startup was struggling to grow its team and infrastructure. Joining Facebook did give Instagram benefits on the way to having more than 1 billion users, as the book No Filter noted below

“It was the most dire server problem in company history. Instagram was now important enough to be mentioned in every press story about the meltdown, alongside Pinterest and Netflix. Coworkers, none of whom did that kind of engineering, sent ice cream to the office as support. Sweeney ate several scoops to try to make it through the night, though he accidentally fell asleep multiple times on his keyboard.”

“The infrastructure wasn’t the only problem bubbling up to an intensity the tiny team could barely handle. Spam was everywhere on Instagram. So was troubling and abusive user content, which the community team could no longer finish sifting through in its shifts—and which was starting to appear in their nightmares. Frustration over the financials aside, selling to Facebook might give employees their lives back.”

Excerpt From: Sarah Frier. “No Filter.” Apple Books.

“Systrom gave four reasons. First, he reiterated Zuckerberg’s argument: that Facebook’s stock value was likely to go up, so the value of the acquisition would grow over time. Second, he’d take a large competitor out of the picture. If Facebook took measures to copy Instagram or target the app directly, that would make it a lot more difficult to grow. Third, Instagram would benefit from Facebook’s entire operations infrastructure, not just data centers but also people who already knew how to do all the things Instagram would need to learn in the future.”

Excerpt From: Sarah Frier. “No Filter.” Apple Books.

“So that summer, Zuckerberg directed Javier Olivan, Facebook’s head of growth, to draw up a list of all the ways Instagram was supported by the Facebook app. And then he ordered the supporting tools turned off. Systrom again felt punished for Instagram’s success.

Instagram was also no longer allowed to run free promotions within the Facebook news feed—the ones that told people to download the app because their Facebook friends were already there. That had always brought a steady stream of new users to Instagram.

Another of the new changes would actually mislead Facebook users in an attempt to prevent them from leaving for Instagram. In the past, every time an Instagram user posted with the option to share on Facebook, the photo on Facebook said it came from Instagram, with a link back to the app. Instagram’s analysis showed that between 6 and 8 percent of all original content on Facebook was cross-posted from Instagram. Often, the attribution would be a cue for people to comment on the photo where it was originally posted. But with the change mandated by the growth team, that attribution would disappear, and the photo would seem as if it had been posted to Facebook directly

Excerpt From: Sarah Frier. “No Filter.” Apple Books.

Consolidations in the same industry always involve reduction of competition. The fact that Facebook is a giant company doesn’t make every single acquisition it made illegal or inappropriate. That’s why I don’t get folks are so upset about Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram. I think it’s safe to say that having Instagram at its current size benefits end users, entrepreneurs and small businesses. There is no guarantee that without Facebook, Instagram would have had the same achievement. It’s also worth noting that the FTC, at the time, approved this merger. As a result, why suddenly did this issue become trending again?

Using data to launch private labels isn’t illegal or bad in and of itself

One of the popular themes in this hearing is the use of data from other businesses by big tech companies to launch competing products. Amazon is accused of using data from startups that work with its investment arm and from sellers on its website to launch competing products. First of all, if Amazon violates any confidentiality term to gain illegal access to sensitive data, then yes they should be held accountable. However, I don’t think using aggregate data stemming from activities on its own website to launch private labels is inappropriate or illegal. What do you think Target, Walmart, Kroger or a litany of other retailers do? Where do you think they got intelligence before launching their own private labels? Here is the revenue share by private labels of retailers. The practice went back to several decade. So, why suddenly is it an issue?

Furthermore, even though Amazon has 35%-40% of the US eCommerce, it still has to compete with brick-and-mortar stores. Hence, if you account for physical stores and the whole US retail market, Amazon occupies only 6%, according to Ben Evans. It’s a bit of a Catch-22 situation for lawmakers. Focus on eCommerce alone and it’s not fair. Look at the whole retail segment and Amazon is likely off the hook as they have only 6% of market share. Imagine that as a successful business owner, you were told not to venture in a different segment, how would you feel? You’d probably say: “wait a minute, that’s unAmerican and against capitalism. Why aren’t I allowed to compete in another category just because I was successful in one?”

What I’d have a problem with is if Amazon abuses of its power to promote its private labels without merits. Specifically, if Amazon pushes its own labels which don’t have any positive reviews at all ahead of more established brands with a lot of reviews, then it’s problematic and not in the best interest of consumers. In that case, Amazon’d deserve scrutiny and criticisms.

App Store commissions

I’ll write about this issue in more details later, but here are a few basic points I want to bring up. Every company that plows resources properly into an operation earns the right to make money from such an operation. Even as one of the biggest and richest corporations in the world, Apple should be able to do that too. As a result, when Apple is responsible for manufacturing its own devices and creating the operating systems that include the App Store, Apple earns the right to monetize their effort. It’s unreasonable to expect Apple to run a charity out of the App Store. Whether the 30% or 15% commission is too high warrants a legit discussion, but I strongly disagree with folks who say Apple should just charge developers its cost of running the App Store.

While developers are important, they are just one side of the coin. The other side is Apple customers. Apple needs to ensure that the user experience on the App Store is as pleasant as possible. Otherwise, they wouldn’t sell as many devices and make as much money any more in the near future. That’s why they have guidelines on the App Store. It’s not reasonable to expect Apple let developers do whatever they want when Apple’s brand is on the line. In life, there is no free lunch. Developers shouldn’t expect to leverage Apple’s infrastructure and reach to customers without abiding by their rules. We all know the saying that goes “my house, my rules”, don’t we?

There is a legitimate concern over the inconsistency of Apple’s rule enforcement. The concern is amplified when it comes to select cases in which Apple has a conflict of interest with regard to its own apps. On that front, I do agree Apple should be held accountable and scrutinized by users, developers, media and the authorities.

In summary

The hearing is a waste of time for the most part, in my opinion. There are interesting discoveries revealed by the committee in the documents submitted by the companies; which you can find here, but the format of these hearings needs upgrading and the answers we got today from the CEOs weren’t that meaningful. I do believe that some of the anti-competition claims on big techs should be fleshed out more.

Disclaimer: I own Apple and Amazon stock in my personal portfolio

Book

Book Review – No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Book Review – No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram

Instagram is so popular in our life that it became part of our vernacular: Instagrammable. I wanted to learn more about a young startup that was founded in the beginning of the 2010s, got acquired by Facebook for a monstrous amount at the time and eventually grew to become one of the biggest social networks in the world. This book provides a good insight into the history of Instagram.

The history of Instagram started with Kevin Systrom, a Standard graduate. He passed up an opportunity to join two startups in their early days that would become multi-billion companies (Facebook and Twitter). He worked for a short time at Google before venturing out on his own. Along with Mike Krieger, a graduate student from Brazil, he developed an app called Burbn that attracted interest and capital from some of the angel investors in Silicon Valley. Burbn was later pivoted to become Instagram after a soul-searching discussion between the two founders. After 18 months of hard work, Instagram was bought by Facebook for $1 billion. The Instagram team and the two co-founders managed to keep their relative high level of independence within the Blue Brand for about 5-6 years. A score of disagreements over strategic decisions and a realization that it was Zuckerberg that effectively owned Instagram, the two founders left the company.

What fascinates me about the book is the chronicle of important decisions that the founders made along the way, especially decisions on product development. From the onset of Instagram, the founders, especially Systrom, wanted to focus on genuine and quality connections with users. While Facebook cheapened the relationship with users by prioritizing the sharing of news and articles, Instagram took time and effort to preserve the unique qualities of Instagram. For instance, they refused to have a share feature because they wanted users to have a genuine connection with whom they followed. Specifications for photos on Instagram were stricter than on Facebook. Systrom emphasized the importance of aesthetic quality of Instagram by personally approving Instagram ads at first, limiting to one advertiser a day originally, guiding celebrity users on how to post nice photos and setting up the tone for the culture as well as how users perceive Instagram.

One can argue that Instagram’s founders sold it too soon, but the counter argument is that without Facebook’s resources and infrastructure, Instagram wouldn’t like have achieved the growth it did that quickly. In the end, the hierarchy and essentially cultural clash with Facebook drove the founders out.

The book provides an exciting story of how little features, care for users, commitment to quality and great decisions can lead to a great product, especially when put in contrast to Facebook. I have been super annoyed by the amount of ads on Instagram. You can’t scroll more than 3 or 4 posts without an ads. I don’t think the founders would have approved that, but in the end, it wouldn’t have been their choice to make either.

If you are interested in a popular company’s history, entrepreneurship or product development/strategy, this book will be a nice one to pick up on a slow hot weekend. Isn’t it interesting to learn why there is no share button, why there is only one place you can post a hyperlink, why little details on Instagram came into beings? The book also sheds some light onto Mark Zuckerberg, who cast a long show over much of Instagram’s history.

“When Systrom joined in 2006, it had almost 10,000 employees. Google, far more functional and established than tiny Odeo, was led mostly by former Stanford students making data-based decisions. It was the culture that drove homepage leader Marissa Mayer, who later became CEO of Yahoo!, to famously test 41 shades of blue to figure out what color would give the company’s hyperlinks the highest click-through rate. A slightly purpler blue shade won out over slightly greener shades, helping boost revenue by $200 million a year. Seemingly insignificant changes could make a huge difference when applied to millions or billions of people.”

Excerpt From: Sarah Frier. “No Filter.” Apple Books.

“Krieger and Systrom started the exercise by making a list of the top three things people liked about Burbn. One was Plans, the feature where people could say where they were going so friends could join them. Another was photos. The third was a tool to win meaningless virtual prizes for your activity, which was mostly a gimmick to get people to log back in.

Not everybody needed plans or prizes. Systrom circled “photos.” Photos, they decided, were ubiquitous, useful to everybody, not just young city dwellers.

“There’s something around photos,” Kevin said. His iPhone 3G took terrible pictures, but it was only the beginning of that technology. “I think there will be an inflection point where people don’t carry around point-and-shoots anymore, they’re just going to carry around these phones.”

Excerpt From: Sarah Frier. “No Filter.” Apple Books.

“Their first prototype was named Scotch, a relative to bourbon. It allowed people to swipe through photos horizontally and tap to like them, similar to a Tinder before its time. They used it for a few days before going back to the Burbn idea, doubting their instincts. And then they tried a new concept that would allow people to scroll through photos vertically, showing the most recent post first, like Twitter.

All of the photos would use as few pixels as possible, so that they would load quickly, helping solve problem number one—only 306 pixels across, the minimum required to display a photo on an iPhone with 7-pixel borders on each side. The photos would be square, giving users the same creative constraint for photography as Systrom’s teacher in Florence gave him. It was similar to how Twitter only let people tweet in 140-character bursts. That would help solve, but not fully solve, problem number two.”

Excerpt From: Sarah Frier. “No Filter.” Apple Books.

“The founders picked their first users carefully, courting people who would be good photographers—especially designers who had high Twitter follower counts. Those first users would help set the right artistic tone, creating good content for everyone else to look at, in what was essentially the first-ever Instagram influencer campaign, years before that would become a concept.”

Excerpt From: Sarah Frier. “No Filter.” Apple Books.

“Krieger did build a re-share button but never released it to the public. The founders thought it would violate the expectations you had when you followed someone. You followed them because you wanted to see what they saw and experienced and created. Not someone else.”

Excerpt From: Sarah Frier. “No Filter.” Apple Books.

“Instagram, on the other hand, was trying to build a premium experience, brainstorming directly with advertisers about their ideas and manually placing their ads. They knew that this system couldn’t work forever, but Systrom and Krieger always urged people to do the simplest thing first, the way they had when they first built the app. Working manually on a small version of the product made more sense than spending precious engineering resources and navigating politics with Facebook’s ads sales team, for a system that might not ultimately work.

Using a strategy similar to that he’d employed when he founded the company—picking launch partners like Burberry and Lexus who would get it—Systrom personally approved every ad. Especially since now Instagram’s brand was too precious to risk letting anyone and everyone advertise however they’d like.”

Excerpt From: Sarah Frier. “No Filter.” Apple Books.

“Only one brand per day, Systrom had decided—that felt right. It was nonnegotiable: if Louis Vuitton called wanting the twentieth of the month, they would decline if Ben & Jerry’s already had the slot. All the names of the early advertisers were mapped out in red marker on a whiteboard calendar. An employee would print the potential ads out; then Systrom would go through them, one by one, deciding what was good enough and what wasn’t. If an ad wasn’t good enough, he would protest.

At one point Systrom was concerned that the food in one of the branded posts looked unappetizing, especially the French fries, which appeared soggy. “I don’t want to run it like this,” he told Jim Squires, his new ads lead, who had come over from Facebook.”

Excerpt From: Sarah Frier. “No Filter.” Apple Books.

New employees of Instagram, especially those coming from Facebook, would regularly suggest sharing tools to help increase the amount of posts on the app, only to be shot down by Systrom and Krieger. Public re-sharing was such a popular request that other entrepreneurs built apps like Regrann and Repost to attempt to fill the need, but these were no substitute for an in-app function. This made it harder to get noticed, but in some ways made it easier to build a personal brand. All your posts were yours. That was what the founders wanted.

Excerpt From: Sarah Frier. “No Filter.” Apple Books.

Trump had outspent Clinton between June and November, paying Facebook $44 million compared to her $28 million. And, with Facebook’s guidance, his campaign had operated like a tech company, rapidly testing ads using Facebook’s software until they found the perfect messaging for various audiences. Trump’s campaign had a total of 5.9 million different versions of his ads, compared to Clinton’s 66,000, in a way that “better leveraged Facebook’s ability to optimize for outcomes,” the employee said.

Excerpt From: Sarah Frier. “No Filter.” Apple Books.

“By December 2016, Instagram was letting users turn off comments for posts entirely if they wanted. Systrom’s willingness was in stark contrast to the attempts by Facebook and Twitter to err on the side of leaving content up, in an attempt to promote environments they said were neutral and open, but that in practice were rarely policed.

The same ideas, of letting users turn off comments or block them according to keyword, had been suggested several times at Facebook over the years. But it had never stuck. If there were fewer comments, there were fewer push notifications, and fewer reasons for users to come back to the site. Even on Instagram’s team, the former Facebook employees promised Systrom that they would find a way to build out the tool so it was difficult to find, and applicable only to one post at a time. That way, it wouldn’t be used as often.

Thanks but no thanks, Systrom said. He explained that he wasn’t worried about losing engagement, that the team was thinking too short-term. Over the long term, if the tool was easy to find and well publicized, people would have more affinity for Instagram, and the product would better weather storms of bad publicity, like the kind Facebook was starting to receive.”

Excerpt From: Sarah Frier. “No Filter.” Apple Books.

“So that summer, Zuckerberg directed Javier Olivan, Facebook’s head of growth, to draw up a list of all the ways Instagram was supported by the Facebook app. And then he ordered the supporting tools turned off.

Systrom again felt punished for Instagram’s success.

Instagram was also no longer allowed to run free promotions within the Facebook news feed—the ones that told people to download the app because their Facebook friends were already there. That had always brought a steady stream of new users to Instagram.

Another of the new changes would actually mislead Facebook users in an attempt to prevent them from leaving for Instagram. In the past, every time an Instagram user posted with the option to share on Facebook, the photo on Facebook said it came from Instagram, with a link back to the app. Instagram’s analysis showed that between 6 and 8 percent of all original content on Facebook was cross-posted from Instagram. Often, the attribution would be a cue for people to comment on the photo where it was originally posted. But with the change mandated by the growth team, that attribution would disappear, and the photo would seem as if it had been posted to Facebook directly”

Excerpt From: Sarah Frier. “No Filter.” Apple Books.

Weekly readings

Weekly readings – 7th December 2019

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly readings – 7th December 2019

How busyness leads to bad decisions

Why Taxpayers Pay McKinsey $3M a Year for a Recent College Graduate Contractor

How I Get By: A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier. Reading about her week is heartbreaking. The sad thing is that it’s common in America. Hustling is great, but it shouldn’t be used to describe the economic difficulties a normal person has to face in arguably the richest country on Earth

Israeli scientists find way to treat pancreatic cancer in 14 days

A revelation on how employees suffered emotional toll while working at Away

Apple will start the wireless movement on smartphones in 2021?

Business, life

I left Facebook and am about to leave Instagram too

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on I left Facebook and am about to leave Instagram too

Ads prompted me to leave Facebook and probably Instagram as well

A little bit over a year ago, I decided to deactivate my Facebook account. At the time, it wasn’t mentally healthy for me to be on the application any more. It sucked me  into politically divisive posts, meaningless sponsored content, time-consuming endless rolling and jealousy from posts by those whom I know. At first, the change was tough, but it gradually got easier and now I don’t even feel like coming back to Facebook. (One tip: don’t sign in your Messenger app as you will be automatically signed in on your Facebook account as well)

The same scenario is happening right now with Instagram. I am not on it as often as I used to any more. It’s hugely annoying when you have to see one ads every three posts. The ads are not even relevant. I even took the time to complain to Instagram on the frequency and irrelevancy of the ads, but of course, they don’t listen. At this rate, I am probably going to leave Instagram as well soon in the near future.

Changing preferences

Personally, I have seen a change in how I consume these social networking apps. I no longer have the urge to know what people in my circle are posting on a daily basis. Usually, people post to share (boast) beautiful pictures of food, fancy places, travel or relationships. Of course, I am interested in knowing good things that happened to my friends. I am happy for them. On the other hand, I’d like to see more on their daily struggles and less fancy aspects of their lives. But of course, such stories are not told on Instagram or Facebook. Plus, we are prone to jealousy of others after their feel-good pictures. At this point of my life, I don’t need to muster any effort to avoid jealousy. I’d love not to have it in the first place.

Nowadays, I prefer individual conversations with friends either on Whatsapp, Hangout, iMessage or Viber. These conversations allow me to know more about them without distractions, annoying ads or jealousy.

Low expectation for Facebook

I think that Facebook needs to turn it down a bit in trying to monetize their apps. Pushing ads down users’ throats will destroy user experience and eventually, negatively affect the appeal of the apps to advertisers. So far, they haven’t done any of that. The crazy bombardment of ads on Instagram pisses me off. Additionally, after the recent departure of Instagram’s co-founders, all original founders of Facebook’s most notable acquisitions (Whatsapp & Instagram) left because of disagreements, reportedly, with Facebook’s executives and lack of independence. These founders prioritize products and user experience. Their departures speak volume on where Facebook is headed to.

Right now, Facebook is still the king. They own four apps, each of which has more than one billion active users. But when users’ behavior changes over time while they keep feeding us useless and irrelevant ads, I doubt that such dominance will be sustainable. On top of that, Facebook will have to deal with the issue of hate speech vs free speech, something that I don’t think can be fixed anytime soon.