[twoodfin]

One of the most valuable software products in the world is Instagram. Tens of billions of revenue annually.

Any of Meta’s competitors could reproduce Instagram “the software” in every meaningful detail for (let’s say) $100M.

They still don’t have Instagram the product. Reducing that outlay to a few billion tokens doesn’t change that.

I guess I’ll believe this theory when Anthropic or OpenAI rolls out a search engine with an integrated ad platform that can meaningfully compete with Google. How hard can that be?

[TeMPOraL]

Instagram isn't a software product, though, except in the trivial sense. It's a portal to the actual service people care about, which is the social network. AI can't do anything about it now, because access to the Instagram social network is legally protected. As long as Meta has a right to control how Instagram is accessed, Instagram the app (or whatever else they decide) will remain at the edge. But beyond that, expect AI. It's happening already, plenty of companies and individuals use third-party software, business automation, and increasingly also AI to create, post, and monitor content. Expect all that to be eaten.

Same with any other social media, DRMed media streaming, and other non-software services, where actual client software does nothing useful and serves primarily as a toll gate.