Copy to copy. Copy to change.

28 Aug, 2022

Instagram, generally speaking, is not of great interest to me. That said, the recent effort to launch a major product shift introducing a TikTok-esque experience which resulted in a major backlash and an eventual rollback was intriguing. I found myself asking How could Facebook have botched that so thoroughly?¹ And What all did they likely do in preparation to try and ensure success? And Why did Facebook make such an assertive, risky change? It was about five days after I first noticed the new Instagram experience before it was rolled back and disappeared.

To the question of what might have Facebook done in an effort to maximize success, a list of some basic product activities could look like this:

• Conducted many user research and design review sessions
• Conducted various A/B tests run by world-class data science teams
• Proceeded with broader regional release tests in different, smaller markets
• Consulted with their most influential power users (maybe not given the backlash?)
• A whole bunch of other stuff, all of it focused on the goal of having a successful launch

Facebook is known as being a technical, data-driven company and we live in an era where running product tests to validate, de-risk, and understand the impact of choices is considered table stakes. With that in mind, the questions that came to mind immediately regarding the pre-launch and post-launch retro for this particular chapter of Instagram’s evolution were:

• In the assumed data-driven, experimentally validated summaries leading up to this launch, what were the metrics of interest? It is possible that a core business metric such as ad revenue completely eclipsed fundamental user experience and satisfaction measures?
• Assuming the case that A/B tests and user research indicated this would be a success, some limits on the utility of such efforts are implied. What was missed and why?
• Charitably, one might ask to what degree was this a calculated risk (as in very risky)? Not all product experiments result in clear “wins” but you don’t always have the luxury of waiting to make your next safe decision. Facebook could have done everything “right” and ultimately had to make a hard call on what they knew was a moderately reversible decision in a high risk high reward estimation.
• In other words: to what degree was it known this would run the risk of broad rejection but that the long term gains were worth the trade off of potential failure?
• What factors could have resulted in not utilizing the available Facebook resources effectively?

The last question makes the assumption that a product decision like this could be tested or researched into certainty. Practically speaking, the reason testing your way into high confidence is not always an option (for Facebook or anyone) is time: you don't have a lot of it. In Facebook's case, if I had to guess, I'd say they were (and still are) terrified of TikTok and that they primarily aimed to move as quickly as possible. When time is a constraint the general limitations of experimentation-based product development become more evident and other methods must be embraced.

This whole fiasco began with another concept that’s closely associated with Facebook’s product culture: copying.² Instagram, loosely speaking, copied Stories from Snapchat and Reels from TikTok with success. Both features were, as far as the user experience and function of being a social network go, incorporated coherently. But the recent attempted change came in a context best summarized by a quote in a New Yorker piece on the tensions between Facebook and TikTok (emphasis mine):

Chandlee, who spent more than twelve years at Mark Zuckerberg’s company before moving to TikTok, dismissed the idea [of concern over competition from Facebook]. “Facebook is a social platform. They’ve built all their algorithms based on the social graph,” he said, referring to the network of links to friends, family, and casual acquaintances that Facebook users painstakingly assemble over time. “We are an entertainment platform. The difference is significant.” ³

This distinction (and potentially massive gap) between being a social platform and an entertainment platform feels both simple and deeply insightful to me. It highlights a delicate boundary in the product experience and user mindset.

Businesses and products evolve through interactions with changing markets and competition. In some cases this may result in bold, direct copying or a more nuanced innovation through inspiration. A generally applicable question can be extracted here: when does the act of copying attach itself to a deeper notion of change? You might call this an incoherent or dissonant product extension, with or without the copier’s awareness or intent. When Facebook copied the video-first feed of TikTok, the "copy" represented a fundamental conversion (or an attempt at it!) from a social media platform to an entertainment platform, and that failed.

In this context it's a little bit easier to see why the revolt against this change was so visceral: users could sense that there was more than the mere copying of a feature or a function. Users intuitively picked up on having their familiar experience fundamentally converted into a new experience, with the primary motive being to the benefit of Facebook, not the user. In that view, it was an extremely risky move (it would have been an amazing success story if it worked). This reminded me of a quote from Richard Rumelt’s book, Good Strategy Bad Strategy:

Extensions [of competitive advantage] based on proprietary know-how benefit from the fact that knowledge is not “used up” when it is applied; it may even be enhanced. By contrast, extensions based on customer beliefs, such as brand names, relationships, and reputation, may be diluted or damaged by careless extension.⁴

In this view, you might be able to frame this effort as an abuse of the relationship Instagram had with their users to the detriment of the Instagram brand. Nevertheless, as far as a Sunday afternoon goes, I would love to know how Facebook managed this product decision from pre- to post-launch.

#product #questions