Instagram overtakes TikTok

California: Photo-sharing application Instagram has overtaken TikTok to become the most downloaded app in 2023.
According to data from Sensor Tower, the total number of Instagram downloads increased by 20% last year to 768 million compared to 2022. Meanwhile, the number of downloads of Tik Tok reached 733 million after a 4 percent increase.
Ibrahim Yusuf, an official at Sensor Tower, said that Instagram has beaten Tik Tok in the past few years in terms of its adaptability.
The TikTok app was launched in 2016 by Chinese technology company ByteDance. Later, the company bought the social media site Musical.ly for $800 million and integrated it into the app, after which TikTok became the most downloaded app in the US.
According to Sensor Tower, in the first half of 2018, TikTok was downloaded more than 104 million times from Apple’s App Store alone.
In 2020, TikTok’s popularity grew exponentially during the Covid outbreak. In the same year, Instagram introduced the ‘Rails’ feature which was an attempt to keep Generation Z connected to the platform like Tik Tok.
TikTok’s dominance over Instagram declined in 2021 and 2022. Instagram added 13 million new active users in the last three months of 2023, while 12 million users left TikTok and the platform ended 2023 with 112 million active users.