Last updated on April 5th, 2024 at 10:37 am

Meta app fights back against Chinese-owned rival with copycat video feature Reels

Instagram surpassed TikTok as the world’s most downloaded app thanks to its Reels feature, which helped it regain ground lost to its Chinese-owned rival.

Since its 2010 launch, Instagram has been popular alongside celebrities like the Kardashians and is central to the influencer phenomenon. However, TikTok’s emergence as a short video platform posed a significant challenge.

Instagram’s introduction of Reels in 2020, widely viewed as an imitation of TikTok, proved pivotal in its resurgence. In 2023, Instagram was downloaded 767 million times globally, a 20% increase from the previous year. In comparison, TikTok saw 733 million downloads, a 4% increase. TikTok had been the most downloaded app globally from 2018 to 2022.

According to Sensor Tower, a market intelligence company, Instagram’s resurgence can be attributed to the popularity of its Reels feature, as well as its other functions like photo-sharing and Stories, which is similar to Snapchat’s disappearing-video feature.

Farhad Divecha, owner and managing director of the UK-based digital marketing agency Accuracast, noted that Instagram has benefited from quickly responding to the TikTok threat. He also mentioned that Instagram’s broader demographic appeal sets it apart from TikTok, which some people perceive as being primarily for younger users.

“I think one advantage Instagram has is its appeal to a broader audience demographic, without the ‘it’s for the kids only’ connotation that some associate with TikTok,” he said.

According to Sensor Tower, Instagram boasts nearly 1.5 billion monthly active users, while TikTok has just over 1.1 billion. Despite this, TikTok has a higher number of active users who spend an average of 95 minutes per day on the app, compared to 62 minutes for Instagram.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and CEO of Meta, Instagram’s parent company, has recognized TikTok as a significant competitive threat in recent years. In 2022, he acknowledged that his company’s apps faced numerous competitors for users’ attention, noting that platforms like TikTok were experiencing rapid growth. Reports from the same year indicated that Meta had paid a Republican consulting firm to create public distrust around TikTok, indicating their concern about its rise.

TikTok also encounters significant political opposition in the US due to ongoing concerns about its Chinese ownership. This week, a bipartisan group of US lawmakers introduced legislation requiring ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company based in Beijing, to divest the app within about six months or face a ban.

Lawmakers in the US, along with politicians in other Western countries, are worried that TikTok user data could be accessed by the Chinese government—an allegation that TikTok has consistently refuted.