The man behind social media giant Instagram has been forced to address user complaints about a series of dramatic changes to the platform.
And for those who don’t like Instagram’s new video-rich environment, it’s not good news.
Instagram chief Adam Mosseri addressed the changes Tuesday night in an effort to help users understand the direction the business and social media platform are taking.
In the three-minute video, Mosseri admitted that there has been a lot of talk about the changes that some or all users are seeing on the platform and tried to address them directly.
Mosseri referred to the “full screen experience” that some users may have seen.
“A more full-screen experience, not only for videos but also for photos, can be a more fun and engaging experience,” he said.
It also struck a chord with the users of the developers of this experience.
“I want to be clear, too,” he said.
“It’s still not good, and we’ll have to get it to a good place if we send it to the rest of the Instagram community.”
Superstar influencer Kylie Jenner was among users upset by Instagram’s recent changes. (Instagram)
Mosseri then addressed the real elephant in the room: He worries that Instagram is shifting to video, away from its primary original purpose as a photo-sharing service.
Mosseri insisted the platform would continue to support the photos, describing them as “part of our heritage”.
“You know, I love photos. I know a lot of you love photos too,” she said.
“Having said that, I have to be honest. I think more and more Instagram will become video over time.
“We see that, even if we don’t change anything, we see it. Even if you just look at the timeline feed, if you look at what people are sharing on Instagram, that’s changing more and more in videos over time.
“If you look at what people are liking, consuming and watching on Instagram, that’s also increasingly shifting to video over time, even as we stop changing anything. So we’re going to have to support- us in this change while we continue to support photos.”
The reality is that Instagram, owned by Facebook’s parent company Meta, is indeed suffering its biggest competitive moment.
TikTok has captured the attention of a large number of users, growing at a faster rate than any social media platform in history, and it’s all about video.
Instagram’s shift to video, along with the “full screen experience” is entirely aimed at capturing TikTok’s audience.
Mosseri did not address the threat from the main rival of his social network.
A third problem exists among the community of Instagram users. It’s gone from a place where you see photos of people you choose to follow, to a place where Instagram pushes new accounts and content into your feed without asking. Name these recommendations.
The Instagram boss addressed this, describing the recommendations as a way to “help you discover new and interesting things on Instagram that you might not even know exist.”
“Now, if you’re seeing things in your feed that are recommendations that you’re not interested in, that means we’re ranking poorly and we need to improve,” he said.
Mosseri signed with a commitment to the “creators” of the platform and with a reassurance “we will remain committed to supporting the photos”.
But many detractors were far from satisfied with the explanation.
Facebook’s rebranding to Meta was about moving away from the tags and labels that Facebook carried after many years of controversy and setting a course for a future we can’t yet see in the Metaverse.
But Meta’s real problem is maintaining its user base and user activity in the face of TikTok’s rapid user and revenue growth.