Mark Zuckerberg is determined to get Instagram users to use the Reels feature.
The Vanguard
Barcelona
Instagram has a goal: to get internet users to use the feature Reels to confront TikTok in the battle for short-form videos. To achieve this, company representatives are contacting influencers and users with a large following on the platform to ask them to use this feature instead of simply reposting the videos they make on TikTok. Meta's obsession is no surprise, considering that all TikTok videos posted on other networks maintain the "TikTok brand," which gives the Chinese platform free visibility. And not just any site, but on the home of its direct competitor.
One of the people contacted was Justina Sharp, according to the portal BloombergThis young woman, who has nearly 100,000 followers on Instagram, received a call last year from a company employee who gave her a series of tips on expanding her audience. At the end of the call, the influencer realized they were asking her to post Reels instead of TikToks.
Instagram continues to work on new features to improve its platform's service.
Many users, including Sharp, believe this short-form video tool is a copy of TikTok's posts. Zuckerberg seems concerned about the feature's lack of success and Instagram's stagnant follower count, which inevitably affects Facebook and has caused its stock to drop 471% since the beginning of 2022.
Since its launch more than a decade ago, Facebook, Meta's flagship platform, has been especially good at personalizing content and showing users what they want to see. By analyzing their behavior and online activity, it will accurately classify what information to show you and even to what extent. The enormous advantage of the algorithm developed by Facebook amounts to a $116 billion advertising business, but the downside is that people have begun to tire of it.
Added to this is the fact that for a few years now, Zuckerberg has been facing a worse enemy: TikTok. The platform has taken another step forward, offering its users surprising and engaging content. Now, Meta's CEO wants to follow in TikTok's footsteps, stating that "I think of the AI we're building not just as a recommendation system for short-form videos, but as a discovery engine that can show you the most interesting content people have shared on our systems."
Instagram wants to redesign the home screen to be very similar to TikTok.
Right now, Instagram's platform is designed so that once you enter a Reel, you're already in a full-screen mode very similar to TikTok; you simply have to swipe up or down to see more short-form videos. But the platform wants to go even further and redesign the home screen so that users access the full-screen Reels mode as soon as they open the app.
TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance Ltd., exploded into popularity in early 2020, becoming the most downloaded app in the world. Americans spent more time on TikTok than on Instagram or Facebook, Meta Platforms' two flagship platforms. It is expected to surpass YouTube in views throughout 2022.
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