The interesting flipside to the copycat issue is that Snapchat intentionally did not copy Instagram. And that was probably a mistake.
Spiegel was explicitly against the concept of "accumulative" profiles.[1] The accumulative feature they rolled out last year was Memories, a private gallery that only the user could see and show to people in person. And he was explicitly against making it easy to add tons of friends on Snapchat. He wanted it to be about your "seven most important people."[2]
Well, turns out people do in fact like their Instagram accumulative profiles to store and share highlights with their followers. And it turns out people like getting engagement and adulation from a broader network of followers.
So, as much as I dislike the crass copying that Instagram/Weil did and his attempt to pass it off as just a "format" -- that's bullshit, they copied vast aspects of Snapchat stories and messaging.. calling it a "format" is naked intellectual dishonesty. I noticed Weil back in the Twitter days and this intellectual dishonesty makes me respect him less.
But Snapchat also did not make the right strategic product decisions here. Spiegel, to his credit, went with a bold vision and strategic analysis about what people want. Turns out it was just wrong with respect to how people want to engage with and present their experiences to a broader set of friends.
There is nothing inherently righteous or honorable about allowing another company to lay exclusive claim to features. That "shameless copying" is an example of competition, and it's what turns the wheels of capitalism.
What would you have Facebook do? "Well, darn. I guess we can't implement those features, Snapchat beat us to it! Time to just lay over and let them churn our users." This is not how any rational company works, and every major tech company has copied others many times.
Almost every companies copies in some form or fashion - you'd be hard pressed to find one that doesn't - but few really do it well. I would argue that Instagram did it very well and you can see it in the success. The product is well designed, extremely polished, is far more stable, is more engaging (for me), and more complete in my opinion.
I don't think your intended criticism has any value in the real world. It's a tired argument and deeply flawed.
I think the reverse argument is a stronger one. That is to say that SnapChat's core innovations that got them this far were closer to a commodity than is ideal for a business like theirs. This is something that SnapChat acknowledges in their own S1.
What I think investors didn't see or expect is:
* The extent to which the SnapChat feature-set was a commodity in a world where several other similar friendship and interest graphs exist.
* The speed and potency with which competitors like Facebook would attempt to compete. I think Facebook's strategy was far more successful than people were prepared for and that's reflected somewhat in the SnapChat stock price swings and analyst sentiment swings.
I really dislike the feature of Instagram that imitates Snapchat. When a software tries to make more than one thing, it loses it's identity. I am surprised that people are still using it, but about the long run, nobody knows.
I saw a funny tweet that someone just wrote "A fear" than an image of Twitter print, of the mobile version, with small spheres on the top (like the ones suddenly appeared on Instagram), so I realized that it's not just me that think Instagram got worse with this feature. And the design solution they found, really annoys me. Now we have this on all Facebook products (WhatsApp and Facebook itself).
Talking about the software identity, I don't remember successful products that tries to do more than one thing. I think it's wrong, but it's apparently working, so I am observing and learning.
I'm on the flipside of this, I think my Instagram use is better as a result.
I shared the same friend (mostly) list between Snap and Instagram and with the introduction of stories my Snap use dropped to basically zero. Instagram is a one stop shop for the accumulative feed, stories, and video DMs. No need to switch apps.
That said, I didn't get a ton of direct messages on Snapchat, probably because I'm older and the kind of 1-1 communication I saw teens doing on Snap isn't as common for my age group, however that feature is there in IG.
I might be an outlier, though I don't think I am judging by the numbers.
On a more crass note, from the business perspective, Instagram is in a much better ad position than Snap because it's really easy to buy ad space. Not only that it's going to be easier to develop content for AR filters on Instagram because they have an actual developer pathway for that.
As far as I can tell, Snap highly curates all broadcast content and advertising, and there is no third party developer support.
Not sure why anyone wouldn't see how bad that is - if anything Snap should have learned from Twitter that third part devs are core to longevity.
I am curious how many people actually feel this is cool that Facebook can simply copy everything Snapchat comes up with? I understand that this is the way of the world. Big fish eats smaller fish yada yada. But is it good in the long run? I don't know how to do this, and I understand any solution will probably be riddled to the core with loopholes. But I do feel like there should be some way to prevent this kind of monopolization. What do you all think from a long-term, idealistic perspective?
From an ethical perspective, I think the amount of truly unique ideas is actually very, very low, I think most ideas (including all the snapchat UI concepts) have been had by multiple people, so I do not think it makes sense to give people a monopoly on ideas since by doing so you are restricting others who may have even come up with the same idea. The amount of obvious patents vastly outnumbers the amount of non-obvious ones.
There is an argument that says that large companies are better at execution, and so will just reap the rewards of other people's ideas, but I think that big companies are actually bad at execution and they are currently benefiting far more from the current legal regime.
Software has always been about copying features, since the very beginning of the industry. With a software product there is always only a short window of having something innovative before others add it to their same products.
Any solution is hard to enforce. Idealistically, the computer world has largely decided cross pollination, while sometimes painful for just the reason you describe, is better for all of us (I agree, and purposely chose not to patent technology that has been worth millions for me and my competitors over the last 17 years).
And ofc you need this story with some 30-sonething superstars self promoting hotshot CEO who is the capable of coming up with the solution of simply copying the competition.
I think it's perfectly cool, yes. I'm not concerned in the slightest with monopolization from Facebook implementing Snapchat features. Good for them, that must have taken a massive amount of business and engineering coordination.
It might be a good thing long term as snapchat is seen as a market leader. Facebook will react and copy features. But in time they will copy so many it will take them off their primary course of gathering more information for the user ad segment program.
Snapchat can offer things facebook can't like privacy and trust that will become increasely important if snapchat can change the conversation through features it will put facebook in a difficult position.
The law feels it is illegal - but we don't enforce laws meant to limit market power and they've been weakened (by no coincidence) over the years. Welcome to Feudal Capitalism.
Instagrams revenues are increasing because Facebook advertisers unwittingly are having their ads run in Instragram. You have to opt-out. Found that out after blowing through and ad budget that got consumed more quickly because of Instragram.
Instagram users as a cohort are the worst audience for advertising. Low conversions, lots of impressions and just all around less profitable than the exact same ad on Facebook itself.
Even music acts that would seem to be a tailor made product for Instragram – still, in my anecdotal experience, a complete waste of money. Instagram the “thing” might be a fun product, but Instagram as a provider of cost-effective advertising, no way.
I have to say that as a consumer, Instagram Ads sway my opinion far more than and grab my attention far more than Ads on any other platform. I'm a heavy user, but it's also something about the format and the quality photography that just gets me.
The targeting is incredibly good too. I've discovered random brands on Instagram that I've bought clothing from which I never would have expected to do. I would never consider such a thing if I see the same kind of advertising on Facebook or Twitter for example.
Instagram is extremely trendy right now, possibly far more than in the past when it was smaller.
I'm surprised it took Instagram this long to copy Snapshot. This guy seems super impressive but adding a competitor's features to your product to increase market share seems like a pretty obvious move.
It might be that it's all a part of execution of the product. Google tries and fails with their social networking efforts and they are also doing the obvious move and they can't .
Most of this will come down to brand equity anyway. I have to assume there are people using Lyft over Uber because those people have negative associations with the Uber brand. Uber and Lyft both provide the same products, but people prefer one brand over another.
People prefer Gucci over Versace, North Face over Patagonia etc.
Inevitably, the same will be true for Facebook vs Snapchat. Snapchat will likely prevail in a way because the "brand" ecosystem, talent pool(pr, actors, producers etc.) are concentrated largely in Los Angeles due to the existing Hollywood system.
Proximity to the talent might not have much to do with it, but I imagine Snapchat has been developing those relationships for a while.
At the time the DOJ began seriously looking into Microsoft about anti-trust abuses derived from their monopoly, there were still a vast number of medium to large software & tech companies that competed head on with Microsoft. That of course meant there were a large number of parties that could sign on to the aggrieved list against Microsoft.
As Facebook formally kills off Snapchat in the next few years, it's a curious problem of which companies will supply the ammunition to go after Facebook for anti-trust abuse. Said companies will be the biggest motivating factor for the US Government to act, their prompting will drive the case.
Given the scale we're talking about now (Facebook is already more profitable non-inflation adjusted than what Microsoft was at the height of its power; and they might double their profit in a few years up to $20 billion before any government action would come through). I would expect companies to begin lining up with their hands out. Twitter as one example, stands to easily land maybe $5 billion or more as compensation for being one of the few survivors of Facebook's social monopoly. Something that has changed a lot in the last 20 years, corporate fines & costs of negative legal outcomes have skyrocketed in practically every industry. Google's worsening EU disaster is just the latest example of that. Facebook will need tens of billions of dollars set aside for settling with governmental entities and competitors (even semi-dead competitors like MySpace - its owners will show up with their hands out for a settlement, and they'll definitely get some crumbs as Facebook will settle just to move on as the lawsuits stack high after the blood hits the water).
As the world witnesses Facebook intentionally kill off Snapchat by leveraging its monopoly in nearly every way it can, there are going to be few people remaining in the Facebook defender camp as the number of major social players in the US & EU markets drifts toward just a few small competitors left standing. Snapchat better have been worth it, as I can assure you that crushing Netscape wasn't worth what it cost Microsoft.
> Facebook is already more profitable non-inflation adjusted than what Microsoft was at the height of its power
As a nit, what's the point of using a non-inflation adjusted comparison? You wouldn't say have compared Facebook to Standard Oil :).
It turns out that 1998 to today is only a 50% change according to CPI [1] and MSFT had $4.5B in net income for FY 1998 [2]. So your point still stands given Facebook's massive ~$10B FY2016 net income [3].
Snapchat better have been worth it, as I can assure you that crushing Netscape wasn't worth what it cost Microsoft.
What exactly did it cost them? Last I checked they never broke up and won their appeal in Federal court [1]:
The case found its way to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected Jackson's remedy and accused him of unethical conduct after it was revealed he had private conversations with reporters about the trial while it was still ongoing. Microsoft would settle the case with the Department of Justice in November of 2001 by agreeing to make it easier for Microsoft's competitors to get their software more closely integrated with the Windows operating system
Their settlement has basically nothing to do with why they aren't dominant today - only top 5 - they missed out on mobile to Apple/Google.
I voted you up for making good points, but I think Facebook's 3b buyout offer(which many thought was on the high side at the time) negates any accusations of abuse of power.
This may be an unpopular opinion but I feel strongly against titles like this. They could have very well gone with "...Facebook take Instagram Market share" but they wanted to make it personal and human.
I'm disgusted by the choice of words here. One company gained an advantage over there other in a market, big deal! They're competing businesses and eventually one will up the other but there's no point in saying "down to its knees"
You're spot on that it's a bit ridiculous. It's intentional however and it's going to get a lot worse yet. Over the next few years the press will start using increasingly violent-sounding, negative, stark headlines against Facebook. Associated headline words will shift toward aggressive tones.
It's a portrait. They do the same thing to most dominant companies once they grow out of the up-and-coming phase. Amazon for example is starting to get deluged by such press coverage; Google has been the subject of it for years; and of course Microsoft went through a solid decade or more of it. Once upon a time, Walmart was portrayed as a cute & fuzzy hayseed retailer just looking to save the good 'ol consumer a buck or two.
[+] [-] abalone|8 years ago|reply
Spiegel was explicitly against the concept of "accumulative" profiles.[1] The accumulative feature they rolled out last year was Memories, a private gallery that only the user could see and show to people in person. And he was explicitly against making it easy to add tons of friends on Snapchat. He wanted it to be about your "seven most important people."[2]
Well, turns out people do in fact like their Instagram accumulative profiles to store and share highlights with their followers. And it turns out people like getting engagement and adulation from a broader network of followers.
So, as much as I dislike the crass copying that Instagram/Weil did and his attempt to pass it off as just a "format" -- that's bullshit, they copied vast aspects of Snapchat stories and messaging.. calling it a "format" is naked intellectual dishonesty. I noticed Weil back in the Twitter days and this intellectual dishonesty makes me respect him less.
But Snapchat also did not make the right strategic product decisions here. Spiegel, to his credit, went with a bold vision and strategic analysis about what people want. Turns out it was just wrong with respect to how people want to engage with and present their experiences to a broader set of friends.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykGXIQAHLnA
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/technology/snapchat-ipo-v...
[+] [-] ouid|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nancyp|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsacco|8 years ago|reply
What would you have Facebook do? "Well, darn. I guess we can't implement those features, Snapchat beat us to it! Time to just lay over and let them churn our users." This is not how any rational company works, and every major tech company has copied others many times.
[+] [-] askafriend|8 years ago|reply
Almost every companies copies in some form or fashion - you'd be hard pressed to find one that doesn't - but few really do it well. I would argue that Instagram did it very well and you can see it in the success. The product is well designed, extremely polished, is far more stable, is more engaging (for me), and more complete in my opinion.
I don't think your intended criticism has any value in the real world. It's a tired argument and deeply flawed.
I think the reverse argument is a stronger one. That is to say that SnapChat's core innovations that got them this far were closer to a commodity than is ideal for a business like theirs. This is something that SnapChat acknowledges in their own S1.
What I think investors didn't see or expect is: * The extent to which the SnapChat feature-set was a commodity in a world where several other similar friendship and interest graphs exist. * The speed and potency with which competitors like Facebook would attempt to compete. I think Facebook's strategy was far more successful than people were prepared for and that's reflected somewhat in the SnapChat stock price swings and analyst sentiment swings.
[+] [-] mkagenius|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhizome|8 years ago|reply
The US does not have moral rights in IP, so you better conduct your business in a way that doesn't rely on their mere existence.
[+] [-] hyperbovine|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] briandear|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qq66|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danso|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] godzillabrennus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xxSparkleSxx|8 years ago|reply
Big deal.
[+] [-] edpichler|8 years ago|reply
I saw a funny tweet that someone just wrote "A fear" than an image of Twitter print, of the mobile version, with small spheres on the top (like the ones suddenly appeared on Instagram), so I realized that it's not just me that think Instagram got worse with this feature. And the design solution they found, really annoys me. Now we have this on all Facebook products (WhatsApp and Facebook itself).
Talking about the software identity, I don't remember successful products that tries to do more than one thing. I think it's wrong, but it's apparently working, so I am observing and learning.
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|8 years ago|reply
I shared the same friend (mostly) list between Snap and Instagram and with the introduction of stories my Snap use dropped to basically zero. Instagram is a one stop shop for the accumulative feed, stories, and video DMs. No need to switch apps.
That said, I didn't get a ton of direct messages on Snapchat, probably because I'm older and the kind of 1-1 communication I saw teens doing on Snap isn't as common for my age group, however that feature is there in IG.
I might be an outlier, though I don't think I am judging by the numbers.
On a more crass note, from the business perspective, Instagram is in a much better ad position than Snap because it's really easy to buy ad space. Not only that it's going to be easier to develop content for AR filters on Instagram because they have an actual developer pathway for that.
As far as I can tell, Snap highly curates all broadcast content and advertising, and there is no third party developer support.
Not sure why anyone wouldn't see how bad that is - if anything Snap should have learned from Twitter that third part devs are core to longevity.
[+] [-] raz32dust|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Eridrus|8 years ago|reply
There is an argument that says that large companies are better at execution, and so will just reap the rewards of other people's ideas, but I think that big companies are actually bad at execution and they are currently benefiting far more from the current legal regime.
So, all in all, we should abolish all patent law.
[+] [-] crucifiction|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomcam|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ensiferum|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsacco|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wolco|8 years ago|reply
Snapchat can offer things facebook can't like privacy and trust that will become increasely important if snapchat can change the conversation through features it will put facebook in a difficult position.
[+] [-] mhh__|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sosborn|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nomentatus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] briandear|8 years ago|reply
Instagram users as a cohort are the worst audience for advertising. Low conversions, lots of impressions and just all around less profitable than the exact same ad on Facebook itself.
Even music acts that would seem to be a tailor made product for Instragram – still, in my anecdotal experience, a complete waste of money. Instagram the “thing” might be a fun product, but Instagram as a provider of cost-effective advertising, no way.
[+] [-] askafriend|8 years ago|reply
The targeting is incredibly good too. I've discovered random brands on Instagram that I've bought clothing from which I never would have expected to do. I would never consider such a thing if I see the same kind of advertising on Facebook or Twitter for example.
Instagram is extremely trendy right now, possibly far more than in the past when it was smaller.
[+] [-] quickthrower|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] siliconc0w|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zitterbewegung|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] debt|8 years ago|reply
People prefer Gucci over Versace, North Face over Patagonia etc.
Inevitably, the same will be true for Facebook vs Snapchat. Snapchat will likely prevail in a way because the "brand" ecosystem, talent pool(pr, actors, producers etc.) are concentrated largely in Los Angeles due to the existing Hollywood system.
Proximity to the talent might not have much to do with it, but I imagine Snapchat has been developing those relationships for a while.
[+] [-] curiousDog|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventured|8 years ago|reply
As Facebook formally kills off Snapchat in the next few years, it's a curious problem of which companies will supply the ammunition to go after Facebook for anti-trust abuse. Said companies will be the biggest motivating factor for the US Government to act, their prompting will drive the case.
Given the scale we're talking about now (Facebook is already more profitable non-inflation adjusted than what Microsoft was at the height of its power; and they might double their profit in a few years up to $20 billion before any government action would come through). I would expect companies to begin lining up with their hands out. Twitter as one example, stands to easily land maybe $5 billion or more as compensation for being one of the few survivors of Facebook's social monopoly. Something that has changed a lot in the last 20 years, corporate fines & costs of negative legal outcomes have skyrocketed in practically every industry. Google's worsening EU disaster is just the latest example of that. Facebook will need tens of billions of dollars set aside for settling with governmental entities and competitors (even semi-dead competitors like MySpace - its owners will show up with their hands out for a settlement, and they'll definitely get some crumbs as Facebook will settle just to move on as the lawsuits stack high after the blood hits the water).
As the world witnesses Facebook intentionally kill off Snapchat by leveraging its monopoly in nearly every way it can, there are going to be few people remaining in the Facebook defender camp as the number of major social players in the US & EU markets drifts toward just a few small competitors left standing. Snapchat better have been worth it, as I can assure you that crushing Netscape wasn't worth what it cost Microsoft.
[+] [-] boulos|8 years ago|reply
As a nit, what's the point of using a non-inflation adjusted comparison? You wouldn't say have compared Facebook to Standard Oil :).
It turns out that 1998 to today is only a 50% change according to CPI [1] and MSFT had $4.5B in net income for FY 1998 [2]. So your point still stands given Facebook's massive ~$10B FY2016 net income [3].
[1] https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm [2] https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar98/fins.htm [3] https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/...
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|8 years ago|reply
What exactly did it cost them? Last I checked they never broke up and won their appeal in Federal court [1]:
The case found its way to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected Jackson's remedy and accused him of unethical conduct after it was revealed he had private conversations with reporters about the trial while it was still ongoing. Microsoft would settle the case with the Department of Justice in November of 2001 by agreeing to make it easier for Microsoft's competitors to get their software more closely integrated with the Windows operating system
Their settlement has basically nothing to do with why they aren't dominant today - only top 5 - they missed out on mobile to Apple/Google.
[+] [-] majani|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ridruejo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mola|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amingilani|8 years ago|reply
I'm disgusted by the choice of words here. One company gained an advantage over there other in a market, big deal! They're competing businesses and eventually one will up the other but there's no point in saying "down to its knees"
[+] [-] adventured|8 years ago|reply
It's a portrait. They do the same thing to most dominant companies once they grow out of the up-and-coming phase. Amazon for example is starting to get deluged by such press coverage; Google has been the subject of it for years; and of course Microsoft went through a solid decade or more of it. Once upon a time, Walmart was portrayed as a cute & fuzzy hayseed retailer just looking to save the good 'ol consumer a buck or two.