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#243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram

Lex Fridman Podcast

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You Can Ask All You Want, but Data Doesn't Lie

People have trouble expressing dislike or failure. There are two types of people, those who won't say bad things and those who are always negative. It is difficult to discern what is true. The rule of thumb is to ask people, but data is amazing in providing insights. Collecting data from the beginning helps to understand usage patterns and engagement. Data is unbiased and people's time is their currency. If they don't use something, it's not great. So, the moral of the story is to look at the data because it doesn't lie.

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Speaker 1
feedback. People have trouble saying, I don't like this, or this isn't great, or this is how it's failed me. In fact, you usually have two classes of people, people who just won't say bad things. You can literally say to them, please tell me what you hate most about this, and they won't do it. They'll try, but they won't. And then the other class of people are just negative period about everything. And it's hard to parse out like what is true and what isn't. So my rule of thumb with this is you should always ask people, but at the end of the day, it's amazing what data will tell you. And that's why with whatever project I work on, even now, collecting data from the beginning on usage patterns, so engagement, how many days of the week do they use it? How many, I don't know if we were to go back to Instagram, how many impressions per day, right? Is that growing? Is that shrinking? And don't be like overly scientific about it, right? Because maybe you have 50 beta users or something. But what's fascinating is that data doesn't lie. People are very defensive about their time. They'll say, oh, I'm so busy. I'm sorry I didn't get to use the app. But I don't know. You were posting on Instagram the whole time. So I don't know. At the end of the day, at Facebook, before time spent became kind of this loaded term there, the idea that people's currency in their lives is time. And they only have a certain amount of time to give things, whether it's friends or family or apps or TV shows or whatever. There's no way of inventing more of it, at least not that I know of. If they don't use it, it's because it's not great. So the moral of the story is you can ask all you want, but you just have to look at the data. And data doesn't lie,

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