They don't hide on Facebook. The company is aware that the competition eats the toast, and if it was not enough to see how the Reels copied the appearance and usability of TikTok, it seems that the company is willing to add more fuel to the grill.
video centric
Who remembers that application that only allowed you to upload square photos? It is clear that the origins of Instagram were very original, but public demand forced them to move towards other formats, finally reaching the incorporation of short videos and longer videos, something that greatly divided users.
Now, the director of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, has published a summary of the roadmap that they intend to integrate, and has highlighted the points on which the company will focus with its news. With topics as straightforward as Creators, Video, Shopping, and Messaging, it's clear that the future of Instagram extends beyond photos, and if you're still wondering, it's probably because you haven't opened the app in over a year.
See this post on Instagram
Not a square photos app anymore
Mosseri is extremely explicit as he confirms that they are no longer a square photo app. You just have to take a look at the main screen of the application to see that posting a photo is now more complicated than ever, since everything revolves around the video format.
Reels are taking more and more prominence (if not all the prominence), and beyond the welcome screen with the latest photos posted by your contacts, everything else revolves around video posts. Well, it seems that things are going to get better, since TikTok and YouTube are taking the biggest part of the cake, and that cake is called entertainment.
in search of entertainment
The idea is clear. You have to look at the place where users spend most of their time, and that's where videos come into play. With the vastness of TikTok and the potential of YouTube, Instagram thinks it needs to bolster that type of content with more video-related visuals (and thus avoid the copy from Instagram to TikTok). For this reason, they will be testing new functions that bring new content directly to users, such as recommended reels, reels categorized by theme and many other functions.
So yes, it seems that we have a lot of video ahead of us, and the chances are that the photos will have less and less impact than ever. Do you remember when Flickr users defended the non-incorporation of videos and the essence of the social network? Well, you know how Flickr ended up after being the social network for photos par excellence. In the end, the general public is the one in charge, and if there is something that does not add up to you, if the majority of users think otherwise, it is most likely that everything will turn towards that trend. Such is the market.