At this point, Facebook has gone too far cloning Snapchat. Is the world’s greatest company at it’s peak of creativity?
Prologue - The Highway
It’s no longer news that Snapchat CEO, Evan Spiegel turned down a $3 billion acquisition bid from Mark Zuckerberg in 2013. A year before, Facebook acquired Instagram for $1billion and would later go on to acquire WhatsApp for a cool $19billion in 2014.
In the recent events of these Snapchat clones powered by Facebook, what exactly do you say is wrong when everything is wrong?
First, to understand this ‘savage’ behaviour, it’s important to understand Facebook. Unfortunately everything about Facebook defies logic. In terms of user experience, Facebook is like a LASTMA official that jumps into your car, forever!
Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of PayPal who went on to found LinkedIn once said that acquisitions are made partly to gain something valuable, but also to stave off the competition. “History shows they fail most of the time, but when they win it’s very valuable” he said. “There’s always the blended question of opportunity and threat.”
If anything, Facebook understands the threat these other social platforms pose. It is aware of what can be built in Silicon Valley’s rented offices & it usurps any app that comes as close as being ‘the one’ — this killer instinct is their only hope of not sinking without trace like other startups before it
Ep. 1 - Instagram
We used to love Instagram. It hasn’t always been this sorta relationship between us. But that was a long time ago, long before Facebook came along, long before they got owned.
When news broke that Facebook had acquired Instagram, we all knew it was only a matter of time. From a neutral point of view, this was a good acquisition by Facebook but the users wanted none of it.
The rebranding came first, remember? The new logo & the changes in the User Interface? They explained themselves & we pardoned them.
And when they changed the feed structure to display what they ‘think’ I want to see first? This got me thinking if they truly know what I want to see first, but then it’s Facebook — with them you have no privacy so …
Ads followed suit and all hell set loose. Facebook had ruined it all. ADS!
But that wasn’t all, Instagram was going to be used as a guinea pig to test Snapchat’s stories model — a test that would later return positive results & see a ‘Snapchat’ embodied into our dear Instagram via surrogacy.
Amidst all the clones Zuckerberg has managed to push to the world after Snapchat rejected his advances, this is the best. As a matter of courtesy, Instagram should not just acknowledge ripping Snapchat stories, they should also send an appreciation mail to Snapchat HQ.
Wait, before you rip me apart for that comment what was ‘instant’ about insta-gram? Even the location feature when sharing a post had become a subject of ‘where the picture was taken’ and not ‘hey guys, I’m here right now’. It makes me wonder why they still left the built-in camera as an option when creating a post. Then Snapchat came and became more insta than instagram itself - at least till they listened to our pleas of uploading previously captured media (a feature they executed perfectly as you get to see the source of the picture & how far back it was taken).
So you see, Instagram has never been true to it’s name or do you think it’s a coincidence they never had a tagline all this while?
Why Instagram Stories is such a good idea & relatively acceptable by the general populace is because of the demographic of the users on the platform. Instagram itself is an image+video platform so Stories is no big deal, it’s still the same content just a different style. Majority of the users on Instagram are within that ‘IG-SC-Twitter’ ecosystem and while the content shared on Instagram Stories can’t be as detailed as what is shared on Snapchat Stories (e.g because of Instagram’s act against nudity) it is a feature users will eventually warm up to primarily because of the type of their already existing follower base and nothing more.
Ep. 2 - Facebook
I’m itching to talk about what users & privacy mean to Facebook but I’ll try my best to remain focused on the topic at hand.
That being said, WHAT THE HELL IS FACEBOOK THINKING??
How many Product Managers do they have? Better still how many does it take to clone an already existing product? Exactly the same feature list as Instagram Stories & even less than Snapchat? Nothing to adapt to your user base? Forced Designs? Over-saturated interface? What exactly is this?
Basically a case of sneak into Instagram dept, Ctrl+C bounce back into Facebook dept Ctrl+V and Viola! Facebook Stories - I actually think this is the case as Facebook denied ripping Snapchat but Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom gives Snapchat all the credit for Instagram Stories - https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/02/silicon-copy/ Funny right?
The success of this feature will most likely be a matter of perception. Facebook should be able to amass 200million daily users (only a meagre 10% of all Facebook users) in few months & might quickly be labelled as ‘the new Snapchat killer’ but I trust one of the Product Managers will know better.
Ep. 3 - Facebook Messenger
Product Manager 1: Facebook Messenger Stories?
PM 2: No! Let’s be creative about the name at least.
PM 1: Let’s ask PM 3, he’s the nerd here.
PM 3: **sleep-talking** Facebook Messenger dey??
PM 1 & 2: Yasss! Yasssssss!! Let’s announce it at the next Product Meeting
As someone living in a market where Facebook first tested Messenger Day — the Snapchat clone its executives refuse to acknowledge was copied from Snapchat — I can say that the new feature has only soured my use of Messenger.
Despite the fact that it sits atop the app with no option to hide or remove it, I’ve never seen more than three of my 600-plus Facebook friends from across Asia, Europe and the U.S. use it during a single day. Others I spoke to have seen a similar pattern of (lack of) usage. — Techcrunch
The problem might be simpler than it looks - sharing private pictures & videos isn’t for the public eye. I’m not trying to show my unemployed high school friends I now donate to charity organisations. I’m not trying to show my teachers I can twerk on a pole while sliding down.
This used to be a great chat app, Facebook wyd?
Ep 4 - WhatsApp
This is the most surprising on the list.
So these people have enough engineers to execute ‘WhatsApp Stories’? LMAO! I always thought there was a shortage of Engineers at WhatsApp the way the make us beg for years each time before adding new features. Ordinary ‘block’ a contact took years and when the update finally came, it made no difference. You’ll block a contact and they’ll still be able to send you that “Forward this message to charge your battery full from India” message. As if that isn’t enough, they went ahead to give us a bloated software that does exactly what the web option does but they need only months for their own WhatsApp stories? Okay.
Folks are saying this is a good advertising platform for enterpreneurs
…head to the marketing drawing board with creative hats on and figure out how to make the best of this golden opportunity. And do it fast before Zuckerberg figures out how to make you pay for it. - Techpoint.ng
Wait. Are you kidding me? Let’s go back to how WhatsApp ‘made it’ and became so mainstream. One word - Simplicity. WhatsApp is built on being simple & easy to use. No wonder we personally on-boarded all of our extended family onto the platform. Now you want me to share my wild-life adventures with them? No, thank you.
The population may be here, but the type of people I want to share my ‘living life on the fly’ lifestyle with are exclusively on my Snapchat so why add my parents & uncle that I see at Church to that list? And if I’m not posting, and my friends like me aren’t posting, and my friends’ friends aren’t posting, and it’s too complex for my grandpa, what are we watching? 💀
The population is right, the demographics isn’t.
PS: You don’t have a ‘contact list’ anymore 😕
Epilogue - Snapchat’s ghost
Facebook might have the audience, the population, but for this Stories feature we’re all fighting & cloning, Snapchat owns the desired type of people. The young demographic Snapchat commands is just perfect — an example of building for your users
Repeat: Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of PayPal who went on to found LinkedIn once said that acquisitions are made partly to gain something valuable, but also to stave off the competition. “History shows they fail most of the time, but when they win it’s very valuable” he said. “There’s always the blended question of opportunity and threat.”
Facebook has tried to buy Snapchat once and has already tried to copy Snapchat about 5 times.
i. Poke was established in 2012, discontinued in 2014.
ii. In 2013, Instagram launched Instagram Direct — now discontinued.
iii. In 2014 Facebook launched Slingshot — now discontinued.
Like the proverbial cat with 9 lives, I’m beginning to think Snapchat can’t be killed. Which even makes more sense when you realise the logo is a ghost of some sorts.
Snapchat is everything Facebook isn’t. Creativity, User privacy, mention it. I think it’s high time Facebook gave up chasing Snapchat & started adding more value to their fleet of world-class privacy-intruding apps. They are so blind from hunting Snapchat they don’t even see they’re ruining the average user’s experience on their platform-or they don’t just care as usual.
WeChat has moved on to testing mini apps, turning its chat app into a cross-platform operating system of sorts — Innovations like this are what we expect from Facebook. The future of chat is bigger than cloning stories into sister apps collectively ruining user experiences.
If you have over 2billion users & you’re one of the most valuable companies in the world, you don’t necessarily have to be a bully, better still you can be a leader. 🤔
That being said, somebody should tell Zuckerberg to call me! Here’s my number — +2348065077904. Call me Z! Call me 😂
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