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““I have to be honest: I do think that Instagram is becoming more and more video-centric over time.””
That was Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, responding to complaints from users like Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner that the meta’s own META,
The social network based on photo sharing is trying to copy TikTok by distributing more videos.
Mosseri tweeted a roughly 2 1/2 minute video on Tuesday to address what Instagram is working on, such as: B. Testing a full-screen video feed and having it all new public video posts shared as reels, aka short clips shared on Instagram resembling TikTok videos.
However, these video-enabling features have drawn backlash from some high-profile Instagram influencers, including the Jenner-Kardashian clan.
Kylie Jenner, who has the second most popular Instagram account (after soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo) with 361 million followers, shared a screenshot of another user’s post on her Instagram Stories titled “Make Instagram Instagram again” on Monday. Her sister Kim Kardashian, who has 326 million followers, also shared the post on her Stories.
“Stop trying to be TikTok,” the post said, adding that most users “just want to see cute photos of my friends,” rather than the growing number of video reels, ads, and posts from people who don’t follow the algorithm Instagram follow recommends them.
The viral message has inspired a Change.org petition titled Make Instagram Instagram Again, which has garnered more than 160,000 signatures. The petition includes a list of demands for the platform, such as: B. Bringing back chronological timelines (where users would first see the most recent posts from accounts they follow, rather than what Instagram’s algorithm pushes to the top of their feeds) and returning Instagram’s focus on photos.
It also reiterated the call to stop mimicking TikTok. “We have TikTok for a reason, and let’s face it, the only reels uploaded are recycled TikToks and content the world has already seen,” the petition reads.
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However, Instagram isn’t hitting the brakes to post more videos any time soon, as Mosseri detailed in his video address via Twitter TWTR:
on Tuesday.
“We will continue to support photos. It’s part of our heritage,” he said. But he added that because users are engaging with it now, Instagram will be more engaged with videos.
“If you look at what people are sharing on Instagram, that’s shifting more and more to video over time,” he said. “If you look at what people are liking and consuming and watching on Instagram, even if we stop changing anything, that’s going to continue to shift to video over time as well. So we have to embrace this change while continuing to support photos.”
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Mosseri said he heard Instagram users’ concerns, admitting that the full-screen video experience the social media site was testing “isn’t good yet.” He added that Instagram “needs to evolve,” and urged users to provide feedback in the comments.
And boy did they.
“We don’t want to do videos Adam,” said model writer and influencer Chrissy Teigen, who has 38.6 million Instagram followers, in the top comment below the Instagram honcho’s video tweet.
Others suggested that Instagram users are interacting more with videos because Instagram feeds them more videos.
Still others complained that they couldn’t see the posts they wanted from friends and family because trending and sponsored posts appeared first in their feeds.
Meta and Instagram representatives were not immediately available for comment. However, Mosseri responded to some of the responses below his video, such as telling Teigen that if she doesn’t want to do Instagram videos, she shouldn’t feel pressured into making videos. “What I want is an Instagram that is about photos [for those] who prefer photos, and it’s about video for those who prefer that format,” he wrote.
He also suggested Instagram users can prioritize seeing posts from friends and family by adding them to their “favorites” in their Instagram settings, adding: “We try to put photos and videos from your friends at the top to show up in the feed whenever we can.”
The back-and-forth between Instagram and its user base came the day before Meta was due to announce its second-quarter earnings, when Facebook’s parent company was due to announce its first year-over-year revenue decline along with a profit decline of more than 30%. And that comes just three months after the company reported Facebook’s first-ever user decline.
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While Instagram has generally been a bright spot in Meta’s portfolio, Insider Intelligence analyst Debra Aho Williamson recently warned that Instagram is also “starting to tail off in the key teen and young adult age groups.” Additionally, analysts have cited TikTok’s competition for user attention as one of the biggest challenges for Meta’s social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Last week, Snap’s SNAP,
The bombshell earnings report (a net loss of $422.1 million in the second quarter) sent the company’s stock plummeting and also dragged Meta, Alphabet and Pinterest down.
