Instagram is Officially Competing With Tik-Tok
As Tik-Tok faces a potential ban from the U.S. amidst their exponential growth, Instagram is stepping into the picture. After it birthed the influencer industry as well as other ranges of social media superstars, Tik Tok, with its 800 million active users worldwide, compared to Instagram’s 1 billion became a quick competitor. Launching a new era of social media superstars for Gen Z, the app has grown increasingly popular due to its viral content and fame-inducing algorithm.
Tik Tok’s growth in terms of downloads increased 58% over the last year, compared to Instagram’s prospective 3.4% growth rate. How does one compete with one of the fastest growing and most influential social platforms of the past few years? Instagram says they’ll just make their own. Now on the Instagram explore page, and on personal feeds, users can post Reels. Reels activate in the same format as Tik-Toks- you click on one, and keep swiping to discover Tik-Tok style content (the same kind of music, DIY videos, etc.) The Instagram algorithm, however, is leaving users leaning towards Tik-Tok for truly explorative content. Perhaps not enough users are producing Reels just yet, or Instagram hasn’t advanced their explore qualities enough, but the content I’ve seen on Reels seems just as bland as what’s typically on my explore feed.
With a 15 second limit versus Tik-Toks 60, Instagram is fighting to expand their posting capabilities. While it is definitely wise to expand against competition, it braces the question - is Instagram expanding too far? The more this app moves away from its original function, to share pictures and videos in an easy format, the more that people will grow tired of it. Look at Facebook- after years of expanding content abilities, it simply has died out in popularity among younger audiences. The simplicity of platforms like Vine, Twitter, and now Tik-Tok, create simple and viral platforms, with nearly singular content formats. Will Instagram fade as it continues to diversify?
By: Adi Shoham