Another Death Knell For Instagram’s Relevance

Judge a platform not by its ability to copy competitors, but by its audience’s willingness to accept it.

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For most people, it is not surprising to be told that Instagram is losing its shine. The influencers are juicing the system, the photos are moving away from that infamous and glossy-filtered construction of Millennial faux-reality, and the kids are, well… not into it. 

Enter: Adam Moserri. The Instagram boss has told his staff that the platform “lags behind TikTok and YouTube on all the dimensions that are most important to creator satisfaction,” which is sort of like a back-of-the-pack marathon runner telling his team a kilometre from the finish line that, actually, they don’t think they’re going to win the gold. 

Instagram failing is not new – and neither is the impressive and bombastic arrival of TikTok. But where Instagram is most falling short – and perhaps most damningly – is in the playbook that it and parent company Meta wrote themselves. That is: if you cannot innovate, copy. The numbers will make up for the awkward transition from your audience.

Here is the scene: Instagram has pivoted to video, seemingly a few times over the last two years, each with varying degrees of failure. This is not subjective, it is from the mouth of the beast itself. And much of this pivot has come in the form of varying attempts to mimic and outright copy the features of TikTok. Unfortunately for Instagram, it doesn’t seem to be clicking. It’s difficult to feel sorry for them.

Years ago, Instagram’s last (somewhat) great threat came in the shape of Snapchat. The disappearing-photo app, with its Stories feature and messaging inbuilt, was capturing a younger generation only just beginning to prioritise the idea of privacy over the concept of share-everything-and-get-famous.

In retaliation, Instagram launched its own Stories ripoff. They didn’t even change the name. Suddenly, Snapchat Stories had a new competitor with a larger audience and much more money. 

Stealing features isn’t new in tech, but the brazen lift of almost all of Snapchat’s components represented a new ethos from Facebook and its Executives: we do not have to out-think or out-innovate you. We just have to be louder. Perhaps the most devastating fact of all was that it worked. Snapchat is still used by a decent chunk of Gen Z users, but Instagram’s brutal, corporate takeover of its features felt like the forced-burnout of a potential new era of the social internet. We’re in charge, Facebook said. Fair enough, everyone seemed to agree.

Which is why Instagram’s latest efforts to take on TikTok – complete with a video-first feed redesign that was abandoned as quickly as it was implemented – demonstrate just how far behind the company is. Most recently, it moved to quell the rise of this year’s red hot photo app, BeReal, by copying the front-and-back photo feature at its core. But this time things just didn’t seem to click. The move was widely criticised and few, if any, embraced it on Instagram’s Reels. The bells are ringing, and not in a good way.

Now, TikTok is taking over the role of Grand Imitator: on Friday, the app announced a new feature that is almost exactly like BeReal. Like some broken antihero, the super app has learned from the companies ahead of it, and implemented the same strategies and approaches with brutal efficiency. It is better for it, too. 

If you need to read into both Instagram and TikTok’s relevance, there is no clearer indication of either’s progress. Not their ability to copy competitors, but their audience’s willingness to accept it. 

If that’s the case, Instagram is as good as dead.