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Comment by MangoToupe

11 hours ago

> Their value is going to stay limited if people don't want to actually use them

Nobody really wants to use instagram either—there's basically nothing positive to say about the app or service itself—it just has critical mass.

5 comments

MangoToupe

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warkdarrior  9 hours ago

Is this a "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded" moment?

  • 01HNNWZ0MV43FF  9 hours ago

    More like texting, nobody likes the phone system, but everyone you know is on it

    • MiddleEndian  8 hours ago

      When texting took off, it was the easiest (only) way to send instant text based messages between friends wherever you were, even if the phone system is now heavily used by spammers and there are better options.

      When Facebook took off, every Myspace page was so full of garbage that they barely loaded on most people's computers, and Facebook was slick and shiny and easy. The real name policy made it super easy to connect with people you met IRL. Even if it's now confusingly slow and FB Messenger can't display your recent chats in the correct order for some reason, it was the easiest most obvious option at the time.

      I don't really understand why people use Twitter (at its best it just seems like a worse version of RSS), but the site presumably loaded quickly at some point and was easy to use, even if it's presumably worse now.

      And so on. They persist through momentum.

      Some things continue to persist, some things get beat out and die. But if you start off more confusing than your alternatives, at least compared to when they started, you won't get picked up in the first place.