USA TODAY International Edition
Snapchat copycat talk not bothering Instagram exec
Product chief says good ideas always spread across tech
NEW YORK Instagram executive Kevin Weil isn’t the least bit defensive about the charge that the Facebook- owned social network is a copycat. Never mind that the 9- month- old Instagram Stories feature mimics a key aspect of rival Snapchat.
“It’s how the tech industry works, and it’s how most industries work,” Weil, Instagram’s vice president of product, said during an interview at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference here.
“Good ideas start in one place, and they spread. We’ve been very public, we’ve said kudos to Snapchat for being the first to come upon the idea of Stories, but Stories is going to be a format that gets adopted everywhere.”
The copycat talk only continued Tuesday when Instagram began rolling out new creative tools that might look familiar to the Snapchat crowd, including eight augmented “face filters” that let you add such effects as twitchy koala ears, nerd glasses or math equations that surround your noggin.
While some analysts and users have griped about a lack of innovation, or too much overlap, from Facebook’s embrace of Snapchat features like expiring videos or face filters, the numbers say the tactic is working. Instagram has snapped up 200 million users for Stories, its video and photo slideshow galleries that vanish after 24 hours.
Instagram also added a “rewind mode” feature that lets you play content in reverse, plus a customizable hashtag sticker feature and an eraser tool. Weil also revealed that Instagram is far along in testing a Stories feature aggregated around places.
“We can aggregate it together and build new stories out of what the world is posting, and that’s cool. That’s another way we’re taking stories and making it our own,” he said.
Weil reflected on Twitter, where he previously worked for seven years.
“I really do think ( Twitter) is an important service; there’s nothing else like it in the world,” he said. “They’re going through tough times, but I also think the future is bright, and I wish them the best. One of the things that I learned is the importance of being really really crystal clear about what your mission is and why you exist. I think Twitter has done that over the last year or so and provided a lot of clarity. It’s on me as much as anybody.”
It’s a lesson he has brought to Instagram: “Our mission is to strengthen relationships through shared experiences … that bring you closer to the people you care about.”
Though there is internal collaboration inside Facebook, Instagram operates independently, which Weil said provides the best of both worlds.
“We move faster because of Facebook because we build on top of their infrastructure because we can bring to bear what they’ve learned over the years about how to grow a product that’s now nearly 2 billion users around the world. ( Instagram has 700 million users.) When we are looking to do something in an emerging market around the world, Facebook has a relationship there that we as a 400- or 500- person company never would have been able to have.”
Weil doesn’t view Facebook as a social network that directly competes with Instagram, though he acknowledged occasional “product tension.”
“There are times when we are building towards the same thing ( and) times when we are building very different things, but there’s no world where we say, ‘ Oh we can’t do that, Facebook’s doing it,’ or Facebook says, ‘ Oh no, you can’t build this, Instagram.’ Both Instagram and Facebook are building what they believe is best for their communities. And where we can help each other, we certainly try. But there’s never a conversation where someone can’t build something because someone else is.”
The new face filters represent a step for Instagram toward taking advantage of augmented reality technologies, “in the name of helping you share the moments of your life,” Weil said. “For us it’s not AR for the sake of AR or VR ( virtual reality) for the sake of VR. … In cases where AR allows you to express yourself in new ways … we’re very interested in that, and again it’s one of the areas where we get an advantage by being part of Facebook.”
Weil said Instagram has changed more in the past 12 months than in all the previous five years.
“You’re not just sharing your highlights; you’re sharing the moments of your life as they happen. It’s a product that as a result people connect much more deeply … than you were when Instagram was just a feed,” he said.