Instagram is giving up on Stories and going all out to copy TikTok

I believe that Meta has completely given up on photo sharing as the primary way Instagram is used and are going all-in on short-form video. 

They are also trying to position Instagram as a branding and not a conversion platform and they have almost entirely given up on commerce in favour of chasing down NFT’s and Digital Collectibles. [This could be a risky tactic as we enter a recession and brands inevitably look for more bottom-of-the-funnel opportunities.]

Meta sees VR and AR as the tools that will help us transition to the Metaverse and that they believe this transition will take 8-10 years (curiously the same period of time between the launch of the iPhone in 2007 and the much-heralded coming of the year of mobile 2015).  

They also believe that creator marketing is the catalyst for brand awareness campaigns on Instagram, but that this activity must be backed up with brand advertising.

If you want to understand how I reached the conclusion based on the recent House of Instagram event Meta held then please read on and I will do my best to explain…

House of Instagram

House of Instagram is a digital resource where businesses (and those who want to know what Instagram are selling to businesses) can find out how Instagram would like you to use its platform. They run occasional virtual events with the last one broadcast live(ish) from London (I mean you don’t actually expect Instagram head Adam Mosseri to turn up live for 10 minutes to his own Livestream event).  

Highlights included:

1. Ajay Gahlaut (Group CCO of Dentsu Aegis) talking about their Unfiltered History Tour collaboration with Vice World News (this is an awesome piece of work).

2. Noel Mack (Gymshark) and FatsTimbo (comedian and creator) talking about their ‘Adapt’ series (also available and easier to find on TikTok).

3. Sarah McCorquodale (CEO of CORQ) talking about creator marketing trends.

It is worth pointing out that only two out of three of these were directly related to only Instagram but they were still worth a watch. 

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that they captioned the entire event, that’s right the whole script everything that was said (well as close as live captioning can be when you are talking about marketing) was there on the screen. I did a quick CTRL+A and CTRL+C and followed by a CTRL+V into my trusty notepad and you can now find an excerpt of that script here 

I decided to analyse the text in a, ‘I wonder if there is a pattern in the dialogue that would show what Instagram really care about’ kind of way. 

And the results were pretty insightful for such a low-level bit of work (we have a whole team of data scientists here at Fourth Floor but they weren’t needed for this).

Those results

The top mentioned words were:

1. Creator                  90 mentions

2. Reels                      63 

3. Brand                     32 

4. Metaverse             30

5. Video                     18

6. AR and VR             12

7. NFT & Collectible  10

8. Ads                         10

9. Picture                    5

   
   

Not a singe use of the word ‘Stories’

Now I am just playing around here but it really feels like everyone's former favourite photo-sharing social app has given up ploughing its own furrow and is now just copying TikTok with Reels.  Which according to a recent article in the WSJ isn’t really going too well. High profile creators on the platform have also signalled their unhappiness (leading to a short-lived u-turn by Adam Mosseri.

In Reel Life

In fact, they were pushing Reels so hard that they devoted an entire section of the presentation to how to create the perfect Reel. This presentation by Thomas Finetto was entertaining but it felt disproportionate to devote over 20% of the airtime to it.

They also shared a slide that showed clearly that because they have failed to grab an appropriate slice of the content marketing that happens on their platform they are trying to downplay the impact of that and show that it still needs to be backed up with some good old fashioned social ads, as long as they contain short from video.

It seems strange that a platform that was built on the hard work of creators and communities is downplaying the impact of that same community in brand awareness and consumer attention retention without the help of ads. 

Obviously, ads pay for all of our use of what is a free platform but surely a company as smart as Meta can think of a way to weave together creator marketing and advertising in a more genuine way for Instagram.

What’s next? 

Phrases to watch out for in future Instagram press releases from Meta will include (SEO hacks take note):

1. Digital collectibles and NFTs

2. Bridge to the Metaverse

3. Real-time messaging

4. Short-form video

5. Brand building

6. Video ads

There will be another House of Instagram event soon – I think it may even be in Paris (maybe Adam could make that one).