On Aug. 5, Facebook Inc's Instagram launched a new function, Instagram Reels.

Reels allows users to create and post 15-second short videos, offers a large number of music libraries, and video distribution algorithms allow users to see the most popular videos, rather than personalized content tailored to their preferences.

Is it deja vu? This is clearly a copy of TikTok.

Facebook Inc also chose to launch Reels at this time node, Sima Zhaoxin is well known.

"copy" competitor

Since 2014, Facebook Inc has "copied" a lot of successful features launched on competitor platforms. Reels is just the latest attempt.

Facebook Inc will keep a close eye on competitors. If they release some successful products, Facebook Inc will follow them immediately."prevent competitors from gaining a foothold in the market"Achieve your own rapid development, CEO Zuckerberg wrote in a series of emails exchanged in 2012.

The exposed email also showed that Facebook Inc's senior employees went to China to learn lessons from Li Yanhong, founder of Renren Inc and Baidu, Inc.. In the report, the employee wrote: "maybe it can develop faster because they are just copying others." "

Zuckerberg is interested, and so is COO Sandberg. EvenA project manager revealed that they would be happy to see Facebook Inc copy his competitors "more boldly and quickly".

In response to questions from lawmakers at an antitrust hearing for technology companies that ended in July, Zuckerberg declined to say how many companies Facebook Inc plagiarized after email exchanges in 2012. But according to publicly collated materials and media reports, in addition to TikTokFacebook Inc has plagiarized at least six apps in the past six years.

April 2020: Messenger Rooms

The epidemic forces more and more people to work and study from home, and parties with friends can only be played online. At this time, videoconferencing tools have become a necessity in people's lives during the isolation period, such as Zoom, Houseparty and so on.

Yuan Zheng, a Chinese engineer, founded Zoom in Silicon Valley in 2011. Zoom, a videoconferencing app, has been growing steadily since its launch, but since the outbreak in December, the use of Zoom has soared by 1900 per cent; the number of daily active users has grown from 1 million to 200m in just two months. Even, "Zooming" has become a new synonym for video conferencing.

The "Zooming" phenomenon naturally attracted the attention of Facebook Inc.

Facebook Inc, who is watching Zoom and other videoconferencing gain more new users every day, does not want to see competitors divert their own users.In April this year, it also launched its own group video phone function, Messenger Rooms.

Rooms allows users to initiate video conference calls of up to 50 people via links, and users without Facebook Inc or Messenger accounts can also join the meetings through links. Conference sponsors can make the meeting private to prevent uninvited visitors from joining at will, or they can kick out unwelcome attendees.

During online meetings, users can use Facebook Inc's virtual reality filter and set a virtual background to make them look like they are on the beach, on a farm, at Stanford University, and so on.

Zoom has all these functions. In particular, the virtual background was originally a feature of Zoom.

Every day, about 700 million users make calls on Messenger and WhatsApp, Mr. Zuckerberg said. Therefore, the company hopes to further help people initiate group chat video calls to make communication easier and more efficient.

But in fact, Facebook Inc has tried to develop independent group video applications before, and the object that will be copied is another videoconferencing product, Houseparty. But last year, the project was terminated. However, the recent great success of Zoom and other video conferencing applications allows Facebook Inc to launch Messenger Rooms without hesitation at this time.

April 2020: Facebook Inc Gaming

Live games are another hot area. Especially during the epidemic, like videoconferencing, the demand for game content and live games has soared.

About two years ago, before Facebook Inc Gaming was released, there were already two major power platforms on the market: Twitch and YouTube Gaming. YouTube Gaming is more inclined to game content, while in game live streaming, the preferred app for creators and consumers has always been Twitch.

After Twitch was acquired by Amazon.Com Inc in 2014, the growth showed an exponential trend. In the second quarter of 2020, the total number of viewing hours on Twitch reached 5 billion hours, accounting for 67.6% of the market share. In addition to live streaming, Twitch has a large user community, including players, e-sports players and game content creators, as well as the regular tournament "Twitch Rivals" that requires invitations.

Facebook Inc Gaming lags behind Twitch and YouTube Gaming except that the growth data is a little better than Twitch.

So, in order to maximize the opportunities created by the epidemic, Facebook Inc launched an independent application for Facebook Inc Gaming in April this year. In addition to live streaming and community functions, the app also features "Tournament mode" (tournament mode).

Similar to Twitch, but somewhat different, to be exact, it is a step forward than Twitch Rivals in invitation-only mode. The "Tournament mode" on Facebook Inc's Gaming allows users to hold various forms of tournaments.

虽However, we can not strictly characterize the "Tournament model" as plagiarism, but there is real reason to suspect that the model draws lessons from Twitch Rivals's creativity, and has made improvements on this basis.

The purpose of this is also clear: to replace Twitch as the No.1 in the field of game live broadcasting!

October 2016: 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, the first thing that comes to mind is Craigslist.

Although the interface of Craigslist is ugly and hasn't changed for decades, it is still "the number one classified ad site in the world, both in terms of revenue and traffic," said Peter Zolman of AIM Media in 2019. "it's amazing that a single site can generate $1 billion a year. (note: Craigslist does not disclose revenue data. Based on advertising displays, AIM Media estimates that Craigslist will generate about $1 billion in revenue in 2018. )

Such a behemoth can not escape the fate of being targeted by Facebook Inc.

In fact, Marketplace does bring great competitive pressure to Craigslist.

Over the past two decades, Craigslist has made almost no improvement and has been dominated by web pages. Therefore, although they all publish classified ads, Marketplace has a better user experience. In addition to the web page, users can also access Marketplace from the Facebook Inc app, which can post small ads more quickly, browse them more easily, transfer used goods more easily, and more importantly, it is more secure than Craigslist (although Facebook Inc's data security is also a big problem in itself).

Watching Marketplace grow step by step, Craigslist, the former boss of classified advertising sites, finally launched its own application at the end of 2019.

This timeInstead, Craigslist seems to be copying Marketplace.This can only blame Craigslist for not catching the mobile trend, allowing Facebook Inc to take advantage of it.

August 2016: Instagram Stories

When it comes to plagiarism by Facebook Inc, besides Instagram ReelsThe most solid hammer is Instagram Stories.Of course, Instagram Stories is also Facebook Inc's most successful plagiarism so far.

Snapchat pioneered the Stories feature in 2013, allowing users to post a set of pictures or short videos that are automatically deleted after 24 hours, known as "burning after reading", which is the biggest sign of Snapchat.

In 2016, Instagram, which has been acquired by Facebook Inc, moved all these features to its own platform without even changing its name.

Everyone knows that Facebook Inc's Instagram Stories is plagiarized Snapchat Stories.

Even Kevin Systrom, then Instagram CEO, admitted: "it's all thanks to Snapchat." "

He added: "for a long time, the Instagram platform was full of Snapchat links posted by users. Obviously, people want to splice these two different products. So we give users the features they want. "--bring the Stories function of Snapchat directly.

Systrom also spoke bluntly about his views on "plagiarism":"Innovation is certainly worth encouraging. Instagram also innovates in the use of filters. But what matters is not who is innovating. Facebook Inc invented the feed function. Later, LinkedIn is in use and Twitter is in use, but their feed is different and the purpose is also different. No one looks down on people who learn from ideas that are generally recognized as great. Every company is using the best form or the latest technology. The facial filters and slideshow on Snapchat have already existed before, haven't they? Wouldn't that make Snapchat great? Gmail is not the first email client, iPhone is not the first mobile phone, these companies are not great? I think these companies are great, and so is Facebook Inc. Let's innovate and improve together, and that's what's interesting about Silicon Valley. "

More than that.Facebook Inc is also full of tricks in the timing of the release of plagiarism. Just like TikTok and Zoom, Facebook Inc chose to go public on the eve of Snap Inc, the parent company of Snapchat.Snap Inc went public in early 2017, Instagram Stories released in 2016, and immediately updated more interactive features copied directly from Snapchat. Later, Snap Inc's share price fell more than 12% on the third day after listing, and fierce competition from Facebook Inc was one of the main reasons why many institutions were bearish on Snap Inc.

Now, Facebook Inc has already copied the Stories function of Snapchat to Facebook Inc applications and Messenger applications outside Instagram, and the number of daily active users of each application exceeds that of Snapchat.

Snapchat is more and more out of sight.

March 2015: On This Day

Facebook Inc's "On This Day" function, that is, "today of that year", must be no stranger to everyone. "Today of that year" can display photos, posts, status, etc., released a few years ago today, bringing users full memories.

However, this function was also copied by Facebook Inc.

Since 2010, Facebook Inc has been trying to ideally show what users have posted in the past. More than a year later, a startup called Timehop came up with the concept of "that year today".

But Facebook Inc waited until Timehop was successful and saw that the app had gained 6 million daily active users on mobile, before Facebook Inc officially released the nostalgic feature of "Today of that year."

Although he copied Timehop, Facebook Inc still has its limitations. Timehop can collect memories from users' Facebook Inc, Twitter, Instagram, Flicker, Dropbox and mobile photo albums, but Facebook Inc's memories are limited to Facebook Inc platform.

It may also be for this reason that the plagiarized Timehop appears very calm. Jonathan Wegener, CEO of the company, was even delighted to hear that his app had been plagiarized by Facebook Inc. "I think in a sense, this is a great recognition of our work and proves that our efforts are worthwhile," he said. One of our investors said beautifully, he said,'if Facebook Inc didn't invade your field, it probably means your direction is worthless'. Wegener also said that Facebook Inc's plagiarism proved that "Timehop is important, and so is memory." "

June 2014: Slingshot

If plagiarism by a big company is a kind of recognition, then Snapchat really does not know whether it is lucky or unfortunate.

Before Facebook Inc copied Snapchat Stories, Facebook Inc had already set his sights on the young and creative Snapchat. "Burning after reading" is the biggest selling point of Snapchat and is very popular among young users.

As a result, Facebook Inc also launched his own independent application Slingshot with the element of "burning after reading". Like Snapchat, when users turn on Slingshot, the first thing that pops up is the camera; after taking photos or videos, users can immediately edit the content, add filters, random graffiti, or add text notes, background music, and so on. When satisfied, the user can send the work directly to a friend.

Unlike direct plagiarism two years later, Facebook Inc seems to have some integrity at this time. The basic function of Slingshot is to borrow from Snapchat, but the difference is also obvious.

First of all, Snapchat is one-to-one content sharing, while Slingshot can share it directly with a group of friends at the same time; second, the most important feature of Slingshot is not burning after reading, but "content for content". In other words, when you receive a photo or video from a friend, you can't view it immediately. Only after you send back your photo or video can you see the content sent by the other person. If the other party sends more than one content, you should also exchange it with the same amount of content.

"it promotes a sense of participation," said Joey Flynn, a product designer at Slingshot. "

"exchanging content for content" seems to be an innovation that can surpass the feature of "burning immediately after reading" and get rid of the suspicion of plagiarism for applications. However, this innovation is really a failure.

Because Slingshot is so similar to Snapchat, but users operate like a tiger and find that this is completely different from Snapchat: if you don't share it, you won't read other people's content?

Such a strange design, to promote a sense of participation, I am afraid it is the designer's wishful thinking.

So, three months later, Slingshot deleted the most prominent feature that distinguishes Snapchat. More than a year later, the Slingshot project was completely over.

After this failure experience,If Facebook Inc plagiarizes again, he will no longer gild the lily, but directly copy it.

Has Facebook Inc's innovation dried up?

Reviewing Facebook Inc's product development history, we can find that Facebook Inc has never successfully developed his own popular application since the Messenger application.

The popular photo-sharing app Instagram and instant messaging app WhatsApp were acquired by Facebook Inc. The popular Stories feature on Instagram is copied from Snapchat.

Even at the hearing at the end of July, some lawmakers pointed out that when Facebook Inc bought Instagram, he threatened the founder of the latter that if he did not sell it, he would launch the same function and destroy Instagram.

But even plagiarism can not be successful every time.

"over the years, most of Facebook Inc's attempts to copy the products of other companies have failed. The Stories feature on Instagram is a special exception. Maybe Reels has a chance, but that doesn't guarantee success. "Said Deborah Williamson, chief analyst at eMarketer.

In order to maintain innovation and bring more new applications, Facebook Inc set up a new team, New Product Experimentation (NPE), a year ago, to design, develop and publish applications and "present a new community building experience" to users. The NPE team can quickly launch new applications and even stop testing when the application doesn't live up to expectations.

However, the Hobbi app that the NPE team announced early last month is still suspected of plagiarism. Hobbi allows users to manage and save pictures related to their interests, which is very similar to the picture management application Pinterest.

It can be predicted that Facebook Inc will launch more testing applications in the future. But whether it is innovation or plagiarism remains to be seen.