Instagram didn't out-innovate Snapchat, but they did destroy them. Turns out "Photo stories" wasn't a moat - it was a feature trivial to copy and deliver at a higher quality.
And while Snapchat's AR filters were (and still are) state-of-the-art, those are only short-term distractions and don't have long-term stickiness.
They'll have a much harder time with TikTok. Tiktok's secret juice isn't the Slightly-Longer-Vines. It's the recommendation algorithm. It's INCREDIBLY addictive.
It's also (today) wildly incompatible with Instagram's bread and butter, which is celebrity influencers peddling masked branded content.
Tiktok's very brilliance is that it's egalitarian - every video gets 100 views. And if you're a heavy user (say 1 hour a day) you will almost every day discover some amazing new creator or video BEFORE they go viral. (or as viral as they might in this app where you get 15 seconds of fame not 15 minutes)
I predict that Instagram will fail to beat Tiktok here, but TikTok will be trying hard to be one of the big boys, and ruin what makes it amazing by attracting and embracing celebrities and brands (already starting to happen).
If Instagram can hold on to their celebrities long enough (and i think they will), they'll win out in the end when people get bored of TikTok after they self-sabotage their recommendation algorithm.
Every social media product eventually gets out of fashion for the current generation and gets taken over and Meta knew that decades ago for Facebook. They have another 10+ years of relevance due to Instagram.
> They'll have a much harder time with TikTok. Tiktok's secret juice isn't the Slightly-Longer-Vines. It's the recommendation algorithm. It's INCREDIBLY addictive.
As long as the corporations, large advertisers, existing influencers and celebrities and mainstream media, keep paying big money to TikTok to game the algorithm and flood their content, ads on there to reach more users, the ruining of TikTok will happen, just like it did with Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, etc and the users will always be in last vs the ones who can pay big money.
I predict that TikTok will screw its users over (which it is already doing) due to investor, advertiser pressure to keep it up and this would definitely happen after they IPO to give them a return. The longer they postpone the IPO, it will get worse it for them and especially the users.
It doesn't matter if it is Instagram. If they can't do it will be from someone else. It is the same old power law happening again. The early users who got addicted to it will complain that TikTok is ruining the platform and will no longer feel addicted anymore and leave to find the next addictive hit. The late users will follow suit leaving it to the bots to pick up the pieces.
And while Snapchat's AR filters were (and still are) state-of-the-art, those are only short-term distractions and don't have long-term stickiness.
They'll have a much harder time with TikTok. Tiktok's secret juice isn't the Slightly-Longer-Vines. It's the recommendation algorithm. It's INCREDIBLY addictive.
It's also (today) wildly incompatible with Instagram's bread and butter, which is celebrity influencers peddling masked branded content.
Tiktok's very brilliance is that it's egalitarian - every video gets 100 views. And if you're a heavy user (say 1 hour a day) you will almost every day discover some amazing new creator or video BEFORE they go viral. (or as viral as they might in this app where you get 15 seconds of fame not 15 minutes)
I predict that Instagram will fail to beat Tiktok here, but TikTok will be trying hard to be one of the big boys, and ruin what makes it amazing by attracting and embracing celebrities and brands (already starting to happen).
If Instagram can hold on to their celebrities long enough (and i think they will), they'll win out in the end when people get bored of TikTok after they self-sabotage their recommendation algorithm.