“Stop trying to be TikTok”: Instagram backs down after harsh criticism

Till now the content that was shown on Instagram was mainly based on the users’ own contacts. In order to give serious competition to the video platform TikTok, which is especially popular with young people, Instagram has changed in the meantime. Instead of scrolling through the feed through cat and family and friends’ holiday photos, a few surprised users experienced a flood of clips from other accounts playing automatically over the past few days — with some test users Even in full screen.

A development that the Instagram community didn’t want to get along with so easily. “Make Instagram Instagram again. Stop trying to be Tiktok. I just want to see cute pictures of my friends,” wrote one photographer in a post on Instagram that has been liked and shared over two million times.

From prominent Instagram users like reality TV star Kim Kardashian and her half-sister Kylie Jenner, among other things, who have a huge Instagram reach — and the way the platform has worked so far, with applications including their own cosmetic products. Are included. Lots of money

instagram boss behind

After a week of mounting criticism, Instagram announced in an interview with the online newsletter platformer on Thursday that it was rolling back the changes it recently made. Testing of the app, which displays photos and videos in full-screen mode, will be phased out over the next week or two, and Instagram will also reduce the number of recommended posts in the app to improve its algorithms.

“I’m glad we took the risk – if we don’t fail every time, we’re not thinking big enough or we’re not brave enough,” Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri said in the interview. However, with the new feed design, people are frustrated and using the platform less, as usage data shows.

Temporarily reduce selected posts

Also, there is the matter of content producers who have so far depended not on videos but on pictures. We are currently working on helping small artists achieve better success. “I think we need to take a big step back, regroup and figure out how to move forward,” Mosseri said. Among other things, they want to temporarily reduce the number of recommended posts and accounts. However, in the long term, the company wants to go back to relying more on recommended articles and videos.

Videos only bind users to their screens longer – which allows companies to collect more data and sell ads. Like Google with its video service YouTube, Instagram’s parent company Meta, to which Facebook also belongs, is now increasingly focusing on short videos that are recommended to users with the help of a powerful algorithm. With its “shorts”, YouTube apparently imitates the ways of its Chinese competitor, TikTok.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously said that featured posts and accounts in Feed currently make up about 15 percent of the content on Facebook and will “at least double” by the end of the year. Despite criticism from the Chinese company, which recently made headlines due to questionable challenges, the group is slowly looking to become a TikTok clone. “People have a lot of choices about how they want to spend their time. And apps like TikTok are growing very fast,” Zuckerberg said.

First drop in sales since 2012

The latest developments from the stock exchange confirm that the group’s concerns regarding the future of its platforms are justified. On Wednesday, it was announced that Meta had suffered a revenue drop for the first time since its IPO in 2012, still under the Facebook name. In the second quarter from April to June, total declined one percent year-on-year to $28.8 billion (28.3 billion euros), with profit falling 36 percent to $6.7 billion.

Online network Facebook reportedly lost two million monthly users – the number stood at 2.93 billion worldwide in the second quarter. However, contrary to analysts’ expectations, Facebook was able to increase the number of daily users to 1.97 billion. Overall, 3.65 billion people worldwide visited at least one of the group’s four platforms, i.e. Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger, every month in the second quarter.

“This is a time that needs more intensity, and I hope we will do more with fewer resources,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He wants to slow down the pace of investment, among other things, by “slowing down employee growth in the coming year.” Meta has about 84,000 employees worldwide, up 32 percent from a year ago.

Apple’s privacy policy undermines advertising revenue

Major online platforms are also suffering from changes to Apple’s privacy policy. These changes have narrowed the scope of advertising personalization. Google’s parent company Alphabet reported weak sales growth on Tuesday. According to The Verge, Facebook was worth around $10 billion at launch. Snapchat operator Snap last week announced a higher quarterly loss.

Insider Intelligence analyst Debra Aho Williamson said Meta needs to go back to its “basics.” Zuckerberg sees the future of the Internet in the so-called metaverse, the virtual world in which users work, play and communicate using avatars. So they changed the name of Facebook to Meta in October.