#inthezone 37: Being Unique
Being Unique
Every Thursday we push out #inthezone articles for the amazing audience we’ve been blessed with…this week is no different. Welcome back, folks! Now you’re probably wondering how we’re going to follow on from #inthezone 36. This is due to the fact that last week’s article featured some amazing things, such as Wow Zone starring on #thejobinterview. Not to worry, as usual, the following article will be filled with news, laughs and, most importantly, great business lessons!
It is now the month of August, which means holiday season for a lot of employees nationally! Well, this is fitting because for a whole week Baki has gone to explore all Scotland has to offer (with family). We’ve received a few photo updates from him, but it was mainly catching Pokemon…typical! Not much else to report on that topic, unless you want us to go on about Pokemon for days? Because that can be arranged…
Aside from holiday season, August brings us numerous other blessings. This year, it brings us an event which is held Quadrennially. For those of you that don’t know the meaning of Quadrennially, it means once in every four years (don’t worry we Googled it first). If you couldn’t guess it from the clue, we’re talking about the Rio Olympics! Yes, It’s almost been 4 years since London was hosting these international games…how time flies. As usual, we don’t want to go into this too much, but we want this post to serve as a reminder that the opening ceremony is on the 6th, don’t miss it.
Talking about unmissable things, there’s been some “cyber beef” going on lately and we can’t help but report on it… We’re a peace-loving bunch, but It’s quite comical seeing two organisations (and their followers) going at it the way they are. Of course, the only thing we can possibly be talking about is Instagram vs Snapchat.
It all started on August 2nd, 2016 – the day Instagram decided to release their “stories” feature. The idea was to allow users to keep their followers updated on their daily shenanigans, without having to actually post on their feed. Stories is a separate feature and anything posted on it will not be posted on your main feed, so whatever you post doesn’t have to be “picture perfect”. Of course, this sounds VERY similar to Snapchat’s already existing “story” feature, which is basically the EXACT same thing. Talk about being unique…
When Kevin Systrom (co-founder of Instagram) was asked by a reporter regarding this blatantly copied feature, he replied that Snapchat “deserve all the credit”, which surprised a lot of people. He then went on to add:
“When you are an innovator, that’s awesome. Just like Instagram deserves all the credit for bringing filters to the forefront. This isn’t about who invented something. This is about a format, and how you take it to a network and put your own spin on it.”
What are your thoughts on this new feature, yay or nay? Comment below!
With that, I think we can wrap things up. What are our final thoughts? If you’re going to copy an existing idea, please ensure you’re adding value to it or do something to ensure you’re being unique. As Kevin Systrom nicely put it, “put your own spin on it”. We’re not entirely sure Instagram themselves have done this, but these are definitely words to ponder on…
