Technical jargon: What does boomerang mean?

Anyone who has ever tried to throw such a crooked wooden thing and, above all, to catch it again, knows that despite the popularity of the phrase "boomerang effect", the thing does not simply fly back to the sender, yet the boomerang is currently experiencing a revival in advertising and communication, albeit digitally and with a different interpretation. For a long time, frustrated clients used the term "boomerang" when their "creative" advertising agencies had generated attention or even a few sales with "slick" measures, but these proved to be economically moronic for the company in the medium and long term, as was the case with various advertising campaigns - including award-winning ones - which then resulted in downstream costs or even write-offs for disgruntled clients. Recently, however, the boomerang has been regarded as "likable" and "agile". "Boomerang" is an app that creates endless clips from ten photos or videos; the special feature of the clips, and hence the name, is that they first move forwards and then backwards in an endless loop. The whole thing is somewhat reminiscent of a flip book, has no sound and is less about the content and more about the effect alone, but "Boomerang" is not just "just another app", as it comes from Instagram, which in turn has been owned by the social media giant Facebook since 2012, when it bought the then 24-month-old company with 12 employees for a whopping one billion dollars. This is considered one of the most spectacular and profitable takeovers in the digital world, as the app now has over 800 million users per month and over one million paying advertisers. So no boomerang effect for Zuckerberg and his shareholders so far. But it has for long-standing advertising platforms and their still loyal old-school agencies. *Benno Maggi is co-founder and CEO of Partner und Partner.