After having taken Facebook to the point of becoming a platform where youngsters perhaps mostly log in to check birthdays, Meta is playing around with Instagram and it will be an interesting moment, to say the least.
Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian don’t like the way the algorithm is playing out on Instagram. And if they are not up for it, Instagram should take notice. If you have logged in to the app recently, you may have seen how the app has moved into TikTok territory (which remains banned in India) more than ever before.
Incentivising users to create more Reels isn’t enough it seems. When you post a video under 90 seconds, it goes into the Reels suggestion algorithm, provided your account is public. According to The Verge, the company has incentivised creators making Reels by rewarding them with cash bonuses and has said it downranks videos that are reposted from TikTok. A dive into the help centre of Instagram reveals: “For public accounts: Anyone on Instagram can remix your reels and feed videos shared after remixing became available. If you have a public account, you can turn off remixing for reels, feed videos or both without changing your account’s privacy settings. You can also turn remixing off for individual videos.”
Kylie Jenner shared an image (from Illumitati) on Instagram that reads: “Make Instagram Instagram again. (stop trying to be tiktok i just want to see cute photos of my friends.) Sincerely, everyone.” She shared it with a “PLEASEEEEEEE” on her Instagram Story
Kylie’s voice is important to the platform because she has a huge base of 361m followers. She has shared a screenshot of another user’s (Illumitati) post on her Instagram Stories, longing for the good old days of Instagram as a photo sharing app. The post says: “Make Instagram Instagram again.” “(Stop trying to be tiktok i just want to see cute photos of my friends). Sincerely, everyone.” Kim Kardashian too has shared the same post, which has notched up more than a million likes.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri has shared a video on Twitter on Tuesday explaining recent changes to the social media platform. Mosseri says in the video that he knows there has been a lot of changes on the app and said that the app is going to continue to support photos, but he also thinks it will become more video-focused over time since it is what people are liking, sharing and consuming on the platform.
There have been reports of younger users shifting to TikTok where short videos play out better and are more engaging. The influence of the Kardashians cannot be underestimated. In 2018, Kylie said on Twitter that she didn’t use Snapchat anymore, which made Snap Inc’s shares take a dive. Within a week, Snap had lost $1.3 billion in market value.
Chrissy Teigen and John Legend
It’s not just about Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian protesting. “We don’t wanna make videos Adam lol,” tweeted Chrissy Teigen, a model and author with 39 million Instagram followers. Mosseri replied and tried to play things down: If you don’t want to make videos, it’s better not to. What I want is an Instagram that is about photos who prefer photos, and is about video for those who prefer that format.” But Teigen wasn’t done. She replied to the tweet: “I guess for me it’s not just that I suck at making videos. It’s that I don’t see my actual friend’s posts and they don’t see mine, and I see the same people over and over and over then the feed goes ‘you’re all caught up!’”
Then there is James Charles, a beauty YouTuber who has 23 million Instagram followers. In an Instagram comment Charles said: “The reason there’s so much growth for video is because we are being FORCED to post video…. The shift to video is not industry wide, it’s TikTok-wide,” he said.
The problem is, Instagram wants to be like TikTok. In India, sure nobody will bother because we don’t have access to TikTok at the moment. But in rest of the world, people can obviously just log in to TikTok for that experience.
The company itself is in a tough position. Facebook was renamed Meta to reflect its metaverse dreams. The rebranding had cost the company quite a lot of money. Then came Apple’s privacy push, and thank God for that. “Ask app not to track” has cost $10 billion in lost Facebook revenue. Plus, the amount of ads on Instagram is messing up the experience.
Let’s see how Instagram plays it out.