Recently, multiple foreign media outlets reported that Meta's social application Instagram has been making small moves. Taking advantage of TikTok's uncertain future, it quickly rolled out several functions and applications that copied TikTok, and even actively offered money to poach talent, aiming to seize the opportunity presented by its rival's predicament to rise to prominence.
According to U.S. media The Information, last week, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said that once TikTok is banned, Instagram must be bolder and more adventurous, seize this opportunity, and may even take more radical actions than launching the independent short video application Reels.
U.S. media The Information reported that Instagram head Mosseri is seeking development opportunities amid the TikTok incident.
Reels was launched on the Instagram platform in 2020 to handle the platform's short video features. Due to its strong resemblance to TikTok, overseas users once complained that it was a copycat version of TikTok. In January this year, TikTok briefly went offline in the U.S. due to the U.S. ban bill, after which Mosseri announced considering launching Reels as a separate application. At that time, Meta employees were also busy contacting TikTok creators, promising monthly cash rewards of $10,000 to $50,000 if they were willing to create short videos for Reels.
In addition to focusing on the short video sector, Instagram is also actively laying out plans in the search field to counter TikTok. According to technology media TechCrunch, Mosseri recently candidly admitted in a podcast program that the performance of Instagram's search function is poor and the company is increasing investment in the search feature.
"To be honest, what we are talking about is content search - different from searching for an account, but truly searching for a certain type of content. This does not perform well on Instagram," Mosseri said, adding that part of the problem lies in the relatively small size of the team responsible for Instagram's search function. However, Meta has recently "strengthened" the relevant team with the goal of introducing more improvements in this area over the next few months or even years.
As early as the fall of 2024, TikTok allowed advertisers to place ads targeting search results, as TikTok has gradually become a tool for overseas audiences to obtain news information. Among young people, some even use it as their primary search engine.
The Wall Street Journal reported that as TikTok faces growing challenges from AI startups, Google's control over search is declining.
In terms of recommended searches at the top of the comment section, Instagram also wants to compete with TikTok. TikTok's recommended searches originate from user discussions in the comment section, which is exactly what Instagram intends to improve. Mosseri revealed that Instagram will "soon" release a new version that focuses more on user comments to optimize search suggestions.
In addition, Instagram employees said that the company is developing an iPad version of the application; it is also aiming to take advantage of TikTok's current predicament to expand its own business.
Notably, on the evening of April 7 (U.S. time), Instagram parent company Meta held a creator event in New York, where it previewed the new video editing application Edits. This application is extremely similar in both functionality and style to CapCut under ByteDance, which also faces the risk of being banned.
It is understood that on April 4 local time, U.S. President Trump once again granted TikTok a 75-day grace period for the ban. TikTok parent company ByteDance also announced that no agreement has been reached with the U.S., and there are still differences on many key issues. Currently, the threat of the ban has not been completely lifted, and TikTok not only needs to deal with threats from the U.S. government but also constantly guard against challenges from competitors like Instagram.
Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7491208796170240512/
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