Following growing criticism, Instagram’s TikTok-like full-screen feature is taking a backseat, with the social media app canceling the beta test of its full-screen feed.
However, Instagram will continue pushing for Reels, a TikTok-style feature that lets users record and share videos for 90 seconds.
“I’m glad we took a risk — if we’re not failing every once in a while, we’re not thinking big enough or bold enough,” Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri said to Casey Newton’s Platformer on Thursday. “But we definitely need to take a big step back and regroup. [When] we’ve learned a lot, then we come back with some sort of new idea or iteration. So we’re going to work through that.”
In addition to killing to full-screen feature, Instagram will also scale back on its recommendation algorithm, which has been placing random people’s content on users’ feeds.
“When you discover something in your feed that you didn’t follow before, there should be a high bar — it should just be great,” Mosseri told Platformer. “You should be delighted to see it. And I don’t think that’s happening enough right now. So I think we need to take a step back, in terms of the percentage of feed that are recommendations, get better at ranking and recommendations, and then — if and when we do — we can start to grow again.”
In a recent earnings call, Zuckerberg stated that approximately 15% of the content in Facebook users’ news feeds and “a little more than that” on Instagram from users, groups, or accounts you don’t follow are currently algorithmically recommended. He also stated that Meta expects those percentages “to more than double by the end of next year.” However, according to Mosseri, Instagram will temporarily cut back on the number of suggested posts and accounts it shows.
Despite this, Instagram is still very much focused on keeping up with TikTok.
According to Zuckerberg, Meta’s ad revenue from Reels (across Instagram and Facebook) is now running at a $1 billion yearly run rate. He continued, “We’re sure that Reels will grow engagement overall and quality and eventually monetize closer to Feed,” even though the company’s monetization rate for Reels is still lower than Feed and Stories.
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