Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri responded to Jenner’s public call to “stop trying to be TikTok.”
Despite a barrage of criticism, particularly from Kylie Jenner, Instagram’s most-followed woman, the social media platform has pledged to continue pushing for video, full-screen posts, and algorithm-driven recommended posts from strangers.
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri responded to Jenner’s public call to “stop trying to be TikTok” and undo the changes with a video message that did not specifically mention the beauty entrepreneur.
If users did not like the recommended content, they could switch to a feed of posts from people they follow or disable the feature for up to a month, according to Mosseri. “So we’ll have to lean into that shift while still supporting photos,” he said.
Kylie Jenner had previously reposted a post in which she criticized the app’s redesign and exhorted it to “stop trying to be TikTok.” Jenner begged, ‘PLEASEEE,’ Soon after, her famous sister and fellow cast member Kim Kardashian chimed in, posting the same photo with the caption “PRETTY PLEASE.”
Because of her social media influence, Kylie Jenner’s posts are widely followed. Kim Kardashian has 326 million followers on Instagram, while Kylie has 360 million. Jenner’s criticism of Snapchat’s parent company, Snap Inc., resulted in a $1.3 billion one-day market value loss in 2018.
The company’s future may be in the metaverse, but when it reports earnings on Wednesday, investors will be focused on two more immediate bets: expanding its short-video offering Reels to compete with TikTok and rebuilding its ad system after Apple throttled access to user data.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes that will take time, and that the company needs to accelerate the process, he told employees on a call late last month. The discussion focused on key issues that will be scrutinized following the release of Meta’s quarterly results on Wednesday.
According to Refinitiv IBES data, Meta is expected to report its first-ever revenue drop in its history as a public company, down 0.4 percent to around $29 billion.
Investors are also anticipating flat user growth and a third consecutive quarter of profit declines, as well as signs of hardware project cuts and slower hiring to manage costs.
This year, the social media behemoth unveiled sweeping redesigns of Facebook and Instagram, eerily similar to rival TikTok’s look and algorithmically driven recommendations of viral short videos.
Meta is also heavily investing in rebuilding its ad system around its own user data after Apple’s privacy changes last year degraded Meta’s ad targeting capabilities.
On the call, which took place on June 30, Zuckerberg told employees that Reels represented a “huge opportunity” for Meta, but that the format was “still only around 15% the size of TikTok.”
