After the stories from Snapchat, Instagram has also copied its Instagram Reels function from competitor Tik Tok. But Instagram boss Adam Mosseri sees some catching up to do with the function for short videos.
“I’m not yet satisfied with it,” says Instagram head Adam Mosseri about his Tik-Tok-Klan Reels in the Decoder Podcast The Verge. The boss of the popular photo app is self-critical in the interview: “We have to be honest, Tik Tok is ahead of us.”
Instagram Reels, Instagram Stories and Co .: Everything just stolen
Instagram has already made a name for itself as a copycat in the past. The stories feature invented by Snapchat went live on the photo network in August 2016.
In the meantime, stories have become indispensable in the app and have also spread to mother Facebook and sister WhatsApp. Even Twitter started a story function called Fleets in October 2020 after a long abstinence.
And Facebook also wanted to cut a piece of the Tik-Tok cake. The app started at the end of 2018 Lasso as a standalone Tik-Tok clone. However, the app could not establish itself on the market and was discontinued in July 2020.
But Facebook didn’t want to be satisfied without a Tik-Tok feature. In August 2020, daughter Instagram had to get started and rolled out the Reels feature worldwide. In Germany, the format has been available since June 2020.
Similar to the Tik Tok app, which was once launched as a karaoke app Musical.ly, users can upload 15-second videos here and add music and filters to them.
The success proves Tik Tok right
In September 2020, Tik Tok published user numbers for Europe for the first time. According to its own information, the app has 100 million monthly users. It is particularly popular with teenagers.
So it’s no wonder that Instagram saw his skins swim away with the youngest and wanted to book something of the unbroken success for themselves. The Facebook subsidiary even tried to poach successful Tik-Tok influencers for the Instagram reels.
Instagram has offered several users hundreds of thousands of dollars for the switch, it reports Wall Street Journal End of July 2020. This is an “escalation” between the two competing platforms.
Instagram needs to improve
But the implementation of the short videos with reels was apparently not as successful as the stories function. Although the use of the function is growing, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri is not yet satisfied.
Instagram has to get better at developing more powerful and creative tools itself, he says The Verge.
