Facebook’s Instagram launched a new feature Instagram Reels.
Reels allows users to create and publish 15-second short videos and provides a massive music library. The video publishing algorithm also allows users to see the most popular videos instead of personalized content tailored to user preferences.
Does it seem familiar? This is clearly a copy of TikTok .
Facebook chose to launch Reels at this time, and Sima Zhao’s heart is well known.
TikTok tweeted: Well, it looks familiar…
“Copy” competitors
Since 2014, Facebook has not “replicated” successful features launched on rival platforms. Reels is just the latest attempt.
Facebook will pay close attention to competitors. If they release some successful products, Facebook will immediately follow up to “prevent competitors from gaining a foothold in the market” and achieve their own rapid development. A series of exchanges between CEO Zuckerberg in 2012 Wrote in the mail.
The exposed emails also showed that at that time, senior Facebook employees went to China to learn from the founders of Renren and Baidu. In the report, the employee wrote: “Perhaps this can lead to faster development, because they are just copying others.”
Zuckerberg is very interested in this, and COO Sandberg also agrees. Even a project manager revealed that they would like to see Facebook copy competitors “boldly and quickly”.
At the antitrust hearing of technology companies that just ended in July, Zuckerberg refused to disclose how many companies Facebook had copied since the 2012 email exchanges. However, according to publicly compiled information and media reports, in addition to TikTok, Facebook has copied at least six apps in the past six years.
April 2020: Messenger Rooms
Messenger Rooms on mobile
The epidemic has forced more and more people to work and study at home, and gatherings and fun with friends can only be done online. At this time, video conferencing tools have become a must-have in people’s lives during the isolation period, such as Zoom and Houseparty.
In 2011, Chinese engineer Yuan Zheng founded Zoom in Silicon Valley. The video conferencing application Zoom has been growing steadily since its release, but since the outbreak in December last year, the utilization rate of Zoom has skyrocketed by 1900%; daily active users have increased from 1 million to 200 million in just two months. Even “Zooming” has become a new synonym for video conferencing.
The phenomenon of “Zooming” naturally attracted Facebook’s attention.
Looking at Zoom and other video conferences and gaining more new users every day, Facebook, which does not want to see competitors diverting its users, immediately launched its own group video call function Messenger Rooms in April this year.
Rooms allows users to initiate a video conference call with no more than 50 people via a link, and users without a Facebook or Messenger account can also join the conference via the link. The initiator of the meeting can make the meeting private to prevent uninvited visitors from joining at will, or kick out unwelcome attendees.
During the online meeting, users can use Facebook’s virtual reality filters and set virtual backgrounds to make themselves look like they are on the beach, on a farm, or at Stanford University, etc.
These functions, Zoom has. Especially the virtual background, which was originally a feature of Zoom.
Zuckerberg said that every day, about 700 million users make calls on Messenger and WhatsApp. Therefore, the company hopes to further help people initiate group chat video calls to make communication easier and more efficient.
But in fact, Facebook has also tried to develop an independent group video application before, and the object that will be copied is another video conferencing product Houseparty. But last year, the project was terminated. However, the recent great success of Zoom and other video conferencing applications allows Facebook to launch Messenger Rooms without hesitation at this time.
April 2020: Facebook Gaming
Facebook Gaming
Game streaming is another hot area. Especially during the epidemic, just like video conferencing, people’s demand for game content and game live broadcasts has risen sharply.
About two years ago, before Facebook Gaming was released, there were already two powerful platforms on the market: Twitch and YouTube Gaming. YouTube Gaming is more inclined to game content; in terms of game live broadcast, creators and consumers have always preferred Twitch.
After Twitch was acquired by Amazon in 2014, its growth showed an exponential trend. In the second quarter of 2020, the total viewing time on Twitch reached 5 billion hours, with a market share of 67.6%. In addition to live broadcasts, Twitch has a huge user community, including players, e-sports players, and game content creators, as well as the regular tournament “Twitch Rivals” that requires invitations to participate.
Facebook Gaming lags behind Twitch and YouTube Gaming, except that its growth data is better than Twitch.
Therefore, in order to maximize the opportunities created by the epidemic, in April this year, Facebook launched an independent application for Facebook Gaming. In addition to the live broadcast and community functions, the app also has a feature called “Tournament Mode” (tournament mode).
It is similar to Twitch, but there are some differences. To be precise, it is a step forward than the invitation-only Twitch Rivals. The “Tournament Mode” on Facebook Gaming allows users to hold various tournaments.
Although we cannot strictly characterize the “Tournament Mode” as plagiarism, there are real reasons to suspect that this mode has borrowed from the ideas of Twitch Rivals and has been improved on this basis.
The purpose of this is also obvious: to replace Twitch and become the No.1 in the game live broadcast field!
October 2016: Marketplace
Facebook Marketplace
Craigslist is a classified advertising website with a history of 25 years. In the United States, if people want to publish free local classified ads or sell some second-hand goods, etc., the first thing they think of is basically Craigslist.
Although the interface of the Craigslist website is ugly and has not changed in decades, it is still “the world’s number one classified advertising website, both in terms of revenue and traffic,” Peter Zallman of AIM Media in 2019 Shi said, “A single website can generate 1 billion U.S. dollars in revenue a year, which is amazing.” (Note: Craigslist does not disclose revenue data. AIM Media estimates that Craigslist will generate approximately 1 billion U.S. dollars in revenue in 2018 based on ad display.)
Such a behemoth naturally cannot escape the fate of being targeted by Facebook.
In fact, Marketplace has indeed brought huge competitive pressure to Craigslist.
In the past two decades, Craigslist has hardly improved and has always been web-based. Therefore, although classified ads are published, the user experience of Marketplace is better. In addition to web pages, users can also access the Marketplace from the Facebook application, which can publish small ads more quickly, browse small ads more easily, and more easily resell second-hand goods. More importantly, it is more secure than Craigslist (although Facebook’s data security itself Is also a big problem).
Seeing that Marketplace is growing step by step, Craigslist, the once boss of the classified advertising website, finally launched its own application at the end of 2019.
Craigslist application
Now, Craigslist seems to be copying the Marketplace. This can only be blamed on Craigslist for not catching the trend of the mobile terminal, giving Facebook a chance.
August 2016: Instagram Stories
When it comes to Facebook plagiarism, apart from Instagram Reels, the most real hammer is Instagram Stories. Of course, Instagram Stories is also Facebook’s most successful plagiarism so far.
Snapchat took the lead in launching the Stories function in 2013, allowing users to post a set of pictures or short videos. These published contents will be automatically deleted after 24 hours, which is the familiar “burn after reading”, of course this is also The biggest sign of Snapchat.
In 2016, Instagram, which has been acquired by Facebook, moved all these features to its own platform, without even changing its name.
Everyone knows that Facebook’s Instagram Stories are just copied Snapchat Stories.
Even the then Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom admitted: “All of this is due to Snapchat.”
He also said: “For a long time, the Instagram platform was full of Snapchat links posted by users. Obviously, people wanted to stitch these two different products. So we gave users the features they wanted.”-Direct Brought Snapchat’s Stories function.
Systrom also bluntly talked about his views on “plagiarism”: “Innovation is certainly worth encouraging. Instagram also uses filters in an innovative way. However, the important thing is not who is innovating. Facebook invented the feed function, and then LinkedIn In use, Twitter is in use, but their feeds are different and their purposes are different. No one looks down on those who borrow ideas that everyone recognizes as great… Every company is applying the best format or the latest technology The facial filters and slideshow-like photo display on Snapchat, didn’t these have existed before? Isn’t Snapchat not great? Gmail is not the first email client, and the iPhone is not the first mobile phone. , These companies are not great? I think these companies are great, and Facebook is also great. Everyone innovates and improves together. This is the interesting part of Silicon Valley.”
Not only that, Facebook is also full of scheming when it comes to the timing of publishing plagiarism features. Just like dealing with TikTok and Zoom, Facebook chose to go public on the eve of Snapchat’s parent company Snap. Snap was launched in early 2017, Instagram Stories was released in 2016, and more interactive features copied directly from Snapchat were updated soon. Later, Snap’s stock price plummeted by more than 12% on the third day after listing. Fierce competition from Facebook was one of the main reasons why many institutions were short on Snap.
Now, Facebook has already copied Snapchat’s Stories function to the Facebook app and Messenger app outside of Instagram. Each app has more daily active users than Snapchat.
Snapchat is increasingly disappearing from everyone’s sight.
March 2015: On This Day
“That year and today”
The “On This Day” feature on Facebook, that is, “that year and today”, must be familiar to everyone. “That year and today” can display photos, posts, status, etc. released today a few years ago, bringing users full of memories.
However, this feature was also copied by Facebook.
Since 2010, Facebook has been trying to ideally display the content posted by users in the past. More than a year later, a startup called Timehop brought the concept of “that year and today”.
But Facebook waited until Timehop was successful, that is, after seeing that the app has gained 6 million daily active users on the mobile side, then Facebook did it: officially released the nostalgic feature “that year and today”.
Although it copied Timehop, Facebook still has its limitations. Timehop can collect memories from users’ Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flicker, Dropbox, and mobile photo albums, but Facebook’s memories are limited to the Facebook platform.
Perhaps it is for this reason that Timehop, which is plagiarized, seems very calm. The company’s CEO Jonathan Wegener was even a little delighted when he heard that his app had been copied by Facebook. He said: “I think in a sense, this is a great recognition of our work and proves that our efforts are valuable. One of our investors said it beautifully. He said, “If Facebook doesn’t If you invade your field, it may well show that your direction is of little value’.” Wegener also said that Facebook’s plagiarism proved that “Timehop is important, and memories are also important.”
June 2014: Slingshot
Slingshot
If plagiarism by big companies is a kind of recognition, then Snapchat really does not know whether it is fortunate or unfortunate.
Before Facebook copied Snapchat Stories, Facebook had already targeted the young and creative Snapchat. “Burn after reading” is Snapchat’s biggest selling point, and it is very popular among young users.
As a result, Facebook also launched its own independent application Slingshot with a “burning after reading” element. Just like Snapchat, when the user opens Slingshot, the first thing that automatically pops up is the camera; after taking a photo or small video, the user can immediately edit the content, add filters, graffiti or add text descriptions, background music, etc. After being satisfied, the user can directly send the work to a friend.
Unlike direct plagiarism two years later, Facebook at this time seems to be a bit more conservative. Slingshot’s basic function is borrowed from Snapchat, but the difference is obvious.
First of all, Snapchat is one-to-one content sharing, while Slingshot can be shared directly with a group of friends at the same time; secondly, the biggest feature of Slingshot is not to burn after reading, but to “change content with content.” In other words, when you receive a photo or video from a friend, you cannot view it immediately. You can only see the content sent by the other party after you send back your photo or video. If the other party sends multiple content, you have to exchange the same amount of content…
Exchange content with content
Joey Flynn, a product designer at Slingshot, said: “This can promote a sense of participation.”
“Exchange content for content” seems to be an innovation that can surpass the feature of “burn after reading” and get rid of suspicion of plagiarism for applications, but this innovation is really a failure.
This is because Slingshot is so similar to Snapchat, but the user finds that it is completely different from Snapchat after the user’s operation is fierce: if you don’t share it, won’t you show others’ content?
Such a wonderful design, if it is said to promote a sense of participation, I am afraid it is the designer’s wishful thinking.
So, three months later, Slingshot deleted the most significant feature that distinguished Snapchat. More than a year later, the Slingshot project was completely finished.
After this time of failure, Facebook plagiarized again, no longer superfluous, but just copied it.
Has Facebook innovation dried up?
Looking back at Facebook’s product development history, we can find that after the Messenger application, Facebook has never successfully developed its own popular applications.
The popular photo-sharing app Instagram and instant messaging app WhatsApp were acquired by Facebook. The popular Stories feature on Instagram was copied from Snapchat.
Even at the hearing at the end of July, some congressmen pointed out that when Facebook acquired Instagram, it threatened the founder of the latter to destroy Instagram by launching the same function if it was not sold.
But even plagiarism does not succeed every time .
“In recent years, most of Facebook’s attempts to copy other companies’ products have failed. The Stories feature on Instagram is a special exception. Perhaps Reels also has the opportunity, but this does not guarantee success,” eMarketer’s chief analyst Deborah · Williamson said.
In order to maintain innovation and bring more new applications, Facebook formed a new team-New Product Experimentation (NPE) a year ago to design, develop and publish applications, and “present a brand new community building experience” to users. . The NPE team can quickly launch new applications, and even terminate the test directly when the application fails to meet expectations.
However, at the beginning of last month, the Hobbi application that the NPE team announced the termination was still suspected of plagiarism. Hobbi allows users to manage and save pictures related to their personal interests, which is very similar to the picture management application Pinterest.
Hobbi
It is foreseeable that Facebook will launch more test applications in the future. But whether it is innovation or plagiarism remains to be seen.
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