Zuckerberg is willing to strip his company of its identity in order to improve revenue. This was already clear last fall, when he announced with great fanfare his plans for the internet of the future and said that his technology, from then on, was “first metaverse and then social networks.” In case there was any doubt about the ease of the businessman to be faithful to his motto of “moving fast and breaking things”, in recent weeks Meta has shared several changes on Facebook and Instagram intended for both platforms to have a more similar operation to TikTok. Changes that have barely lasted a few days in regard to the second ‘app’.
After hundreds of thousands of Instagram users complained about the company’s commitment to increasingly prioritizing video content over photography, Adam Mosseri, executive director of the application, has announced the decision to pause some changes. In the next weeks the evidence of the display of images and recorded content will disappear that occupies the entire user screen and the number of recommended posts will be (temporarily) reduced that are shown and that have been created by accounts that Internet users do not follow.
“I’m glad we took the risk. If we don’t fail from time to time, it’s because we don’t think big enough,” Mosseri explained in an interview with the specialized media ‘The Verge’. “But we definitely need to take a big step back and regroup,” he continued. And it is that, as he has stated, “people feel frustrated with the new design and the usage data is not very good.”
Effectively, the application backtracks on its noveltiesdesigned to capture the attention of the young user, after a week in which hundreds of thousands of creators have lamented the progressive renunciation of the ‘app’ to its identity to end up becoming a kind of TikTok transcript.
Under the slogan ‘Do Instagram Instagram again’, the German photographer Tati Bruening launched a campaign on Change.org demanding that Meta return the ‘app’ to its origins and that, in just a few days, has reached more than 230,000 signatures. Some ‘influencers’ like the sisters Kim Kardashian y Kylie Jenner They have shown themselves in favor of the cause.
As we said, some changes, such as the reduction in recommended content, are going to be temporary. Mark Zuckerberg stated in a conversation with investors a few days ago that he expects that, by 2023, 30% of the content consumed by users on Instagram will be of this type. The goal of the ‘app’ right now is refine the algorithm responsible for selecting these publications to offer better results in the future.
Meta has spent months facing an identity crisis and the reduced income and benefits. The company hopes to increase the number of users who come to Facebook and Instagram by giving the applications a good facelift. And, for this, it is paying special attention to TikTok, the most downloaded ‘app’ globally and, without a doubt, the one that arouses the most interest among the majority of underage Internet users.