Over the past few months, Instagram has been redesigned with reels at the forefront, which did not sit well with several Insta users.
In response to growing criticism from celebrities like Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian about making Instagram similar to rival TikTok, the head of the social media platform, Adam Mosseri, said that the application will become more video-focused over time.
Mosseri posted a video on Twitter, mentioning that “there is a lot happening on Instagram right now”. He further said that the platform, which was founded in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and later acquired by Facebook, will keep supporting photo sharing, but will become more video-focused moving forward as that’s what users consume more. The head also said that it is testing a new, full-screen version of users’ feeds and that the experience will have to be improved if the feature is launched for the Insta community.
Further, about recommendations on Instagram, which are posts or videos that appear in users’ feeds from people or accounts they do not follow, Mosseri said that they are meant to help account holders discover fresh content. This acts as one of the “most effective and important” ways to help creators reach out to more people. These recommendations can be closed or snoozed by the users for up to a month, he added.
Over the past few months, the app has been redesigned with reels at the forefront, which did not sit well with several Insta users. Mosseri’s tweet comes after Kylie Jenner, an American socialite and businesswoman, criticised Instagram for mimicking TikTok, a Chinese short video sharing app.
“Make Instagram Instagram again,” Jenner, who is also one of the most followed celebrities on the app with around 361 million followers, posted on Monday. “Stop trying to be TikTok I just want to see cute photos of my friends. Sincerely, everyone.”
The influence of the personality can be judged by the fact that in February 2018, shares of Snap, an American multimedia instant messaging app, fell by 7% after Jenner wrote on Twitter that she no longer uses Snapchat after the company redesigned its app. Stories and incoming Snapchat were condensed to one “Friends” page in the new update.
