First Snapchat, now TikTok: Instagram has mastered the art of borrowing features
The latest user data suggests its pivot to video with Reels over five years ago has paid off.
Facebook was not really close to being the first name in the social media game, with SixDegrees, MySpace, Friendster, and a long list of now defunct sites exploring the idea of creating platforms to connect people online before Mark Zuckerberg’s company. However, it was Facebook, despite arriving somewhat late to the party, that won out in the end, iterating on the idea and focusing on college campuses like the one where its 19-year-old creator found himself at the time.
The Meta CEO hasn’t really been shy to borrow, or simply buy, good ideas ever since.
When Instagram was blowing up, Zuck and co. saw a potential threat to Facebook, eventually buying the app that had just 13 employees for $1 billion. When Snapchat’s “stories” concept proved wildly popular, it wasn’t long before Instagram had the same feature... with the same name. More recently, after Elon Musk relaunched Twitter as X, Meta was quick to push out Threads, its text-based alternative.
Back when a new challenge emerged from the then Chinese-owned TikTok, Instagram replied with Reels, its own vertical feed, in August 2020. Now, more than five years later, it’s fair to say that Meta seems to have pulled it off again.
The reel deal
While it might be true that if you see a funny TikTok video, you can expect to see the same content recycled on Reels a few weeks later, for Insta users (and Meta’s mighty advertising machine), it doesn’t seem to matter. The once photo-focused app’s daily user count has overtaken TikTok’s in the US once more, according to data from Similarweb, a digital market intelligence company.
Now, the compelling, algorithmic content feeds that dominate the time and attention of people the world over are so powerful that not a week goes by without policymakers, scientists, and millions of everyday doomscrollers wondering about the negative effects they might have on their lives.
Indeed, the very concept of the “infinite scroll,” made popular by TikTok, is so addictive that the European Union is looking to kill the feature entirely.
