It’s interesting how the holidays can often bring the best and worst out of all of us. We celebrate with our families, and make the most of our time together with them, but it’s always business as usual.
That goes for business in general, too. Doesn’t matter the time of year, but what does is whether the outcomes are incomes.
So I find it funny that during the most wonderful time of the year, the business aspects of two of the world’s most beloved social media, Twitter and Instagram, are battling each other out. They both want a part of each other, but are unwilling to commit to one another. Sounds like your standard friends with benefits relationship to me.
But really, while they both get what they want from the other, they’re still looking to distinguish themselves on their own. Twitter wants to make its own fancy photo app, and Instagram wants to stop relying on Twitter as an easy, accessible portal for users to share their photos. At the same time, though, Twitter knows no one will think it can be as good as Instagram, and Instagram knows that the most amount of its users’ peers will see their uploads via Twitter before they do on Instagram’s own platform.
So just like those friends with benefits relationships, it’s complicated.
And now that these two platforms are trying to break it off with one another, I’m now feeling complicated too. I like Twitter and Instagram together– they make a good couple. And I’d much rather see my friends’ photos from Instagram via Twitter simply because it’s one less platform I need to open when going through my daily smartphone rituals. Weird, I know, but oh well.
But then again, we have to take into consideration the thing that I really don’t like about social media: it’s still business as usual.
Instagram, like Facebook and Twitter in their early days, is an ad free platform. But where will that get them in the long run? And to be honest, as much as I hate the corporate part of social media, I really like Instagram, so if it means that in order for it to stick around that it must break up with Twitter and start incorporating ads into its content, then as I’ve already done with the others, I’ll give in.
And won’t complain too much about it, because you know, it’s the most wonderful time of the year after all.
