What do you do as a tech company when even subtly cloning features from rival apps doesn’t keep users on your platform – steal the whole damn format.
TikTok has been Instagram‘s main rival and the Facebook-owned company has been trying to capture the TikTok audience and its remaining users with new features copied from TikTok.
Reels was a direct aim for TikTok short-form video but Instagram isn’t done yet. They are experimenting with algorithmic additions within the main feed. They recently announced that they’ll be mixing Suggested Posts with regular posts inside your feed with the addition of topics for users to pick to fine-tune what the algorithm shows on their main feed – something TikTok prompts you to do when you first sign up.
Instagram is taking it even further and will start showing full screen videos recommended by the alforithm and will feature on your main feed including videos from people you don’t follow – similar to TikTok’s For You Page.
“We’re also going to be experimenting with how do we embrace video more broadly — full screen, immersive, entertaining, mobile-first video. You’ll see us do a number of things, or experiment with a number of things in this space over the coming months,” said Facebook’s head on Instagram, Adam Mosseri confirming the shift of the platform from being just a photo-sharing app.
This announcement was meant with a lot of criticism on Twitter:
