Instagram announces 60-second Stories and may become a TikTok copycat
Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2025 3:31 am
Now, Facebook (sorry, Meta!) is signaling that it will soon abandon one of its most famous “inspired” tools: stories. That was an idea that Snapchat first developed in the middle of the last decade and Zuckerberg’s company decided to include it in all its services without paying any royalties to the other organization.
Since 2016, like Snapchat, you can post 15-second videos that disappear after 24 mint database hours. Now, the company has confirmed that it will soon be possible to post 60-second videos on Stories , just like Reels, a feature that — let’s be honest — seems inspired by TikTok.
The news comes in the same quarter that Instagram decided to close IGTV . Of course, as is tradition, the company that aims to make a “revolution” with its metaverse was not so original in this case. Does posting long videos not sound much like YouTube to you?
Fun fact: Before Instagram was acquired for $1 billion in 2012 , the company was already a giant and began developing a mobile app that would allow users to post photos with filters.
Does it remind you of anything?
Yes, in case of failure in the acquisition of Instagram, Facebook already had a "killer" for the real "killer" of everything that annoys Zuckerberg's company. Facebook Camera was launched a month after the acquisition of Instagram and it is something that today almost no one remembers.
This aggressive strategy has turned the service that once featured food “pornography” and hipster-filtered pet photos into something more like Frankenstein. Not in those words, of course, but it’s something that even the company agrees with.
“We’ve made a lot of new bets [on the app] ,” Instagram boss Adam Mosseri told The Verge earlier this year. According to him, “most people” don’t know the difference between videos posted on Instagram and IGTV, for example. “We need to refocus on simplicity and craftsmanship.”
Back to simplicity
Until recently, for videos only, you had four ways to post on Instagram:
Feed;
Stories;
IGTV;
Reels.
All of these were "inspired" by some of its competitors' resources. Photos, which were the core of the social app until the beginning, are still there, but they are not as important to the company as they used to be.
Mosseri said in June that the service is “no longer a photo-sharing app” when explaining video plans: “Let’s be honest, there’s really serious competition right now. TikTok is huge, YouTube is even bigger, and there are a lot of other upstarts as well. People are looking to Instagram for entertainment, there’s tough competition, there’s more to do, and we have to embrace that.”
That will radically change Instagram, according to media experts such as Social Media Today . Closing IGTV was the first step . Now, turning Stories into something very similar to Reels, which Mosseri said no longer made him “happy,” could serve only one purpose:
merge them to offer a simple tool for full-screen video and a near-endless source of entertainment content to scroll through. Like who? TikTok, of course.
Instagram has changed many times. Its logo, at first, was a Polaroid camera, for example. But when the product manager says that the main function of the app is no longer so important and talks specifically about TikTok (competing with YouTube, we already know, they failed), what do you expect to happen?
Original Instagram logo | Source: Reproduction
Why TikTok?
Facebook was created in 2004, less than a year before YouTube. But Facebook was mainly for students at the time. MySpace was the largest social network. And YouTube became world famous before Facebook.
So when Mark Zuckerberg had the strength to fight back against big companies, he looked to other social media services like MySpace and Snapchat, not YouTube. YouTube was acquired by another giant (Google) and had its own strategy to maintain its reign in video.
Facebook has recently tried to compete with YouTube. In 2018, it launched IGTV, an Instagram tool for long-form videos, saying it was “the future of video ,” but it failed and was abandoned last October . In reality, the company was nowhere near a threat to YouTube.
But since Facebook surpassed MySpace in user numbers in 2009, no other social service has come as close to the audiences of its brands, Facebook and Instagram, as TikTok. Don't even think of Twitter, from which Facebook got the "inspiration" for its timeline, or LinkedIn, which also imitated Facebook's feed. These two social services remain niche.
TikTok is getting huge, really huge. And fast. The Chinese app hit 1 billion users in September . That’s close behind Instagram, which has 1.4 billion users today. Facebook remains the largest social platform in the world, with nearly 3 billion users.
What makes TikTok even more impressive is the speed of growth. As we can see in the chart below, it took Facebook almost nine years to reach 1 billion users; for Instagram, almost eight years; for TikTok, just five.
Source: Axios
There are a few other issues. Facebook has been facing controversy for about two months since internal company documents became public showing that its executives knew that its services were causing problems in mental health, democracy and even fueling wars.
Instagram will testify before the US Senate in December 2021 after The Wall Street Journal published internal research showing that one in three girls thinks Instagram makes body image issues worse and that the social app was causing anxiety and depression.
The company was aware of these problems and apparently did little to help its users, thinking more about profit than public welfare. Because of this, fewer and fewer people trust the company , research shows. Facebook was the least trusted social company in research from previous years. And, after that, this number decreased even further.
More than that, Facebook’s services are facing a decline in usage among young people. Today, 63% of Americans between 12 and 17 use TikTok. Among them, only 57% use Instagram, according to Forrester research .
Why is it a problem? Historically, young people are responsible for trends and are more engaged with social media. If they aren't there, people of other ages would start looking for other options that are cooler and more modern. To stop this, Instagram is trying to become TikTok.
What should marketers do?
First off, let’s talk about video. If you still think video is the future of the Internet, change your mind. Video is not the future, it’s the present! According to Cisco , video will be responsible for 82% of Internet traffic next year. So if you haven’t started investing in it yet, you should do so, even if it’s late.
Do you need to be on TikTok? Be careful here. Before you decide, it’s necessary to analyze your brand personality. Is your audience there? Don’t blindly follow trends. It’s not just TikTok that’s growing. YouTube is still huge. But you have other options. Spotify is growing a lot with podcasts , for example. Again, do you need to be there? Ask your audience.
If you're heavily dependent on Instagram, should you be worried? The answer is yes. First, the social media app is changing its core to appeal to younger people. So maybe your audience that loves old photos in the feed will look elsewhere like Pinterest, for example, which continues to grow as a niche service and has more users today than Twitter.
There's another thing. Instagram has been successful in slowing down Snapchat in the past by imitating it. But the same didn't work with YouTube. Yes, the company has a lot of money. But MySpace, sold to News Corp. at a time of great popularity , also had it and was overtaken by Facebook in the past.
We had another similar case around the world. The top countries in social media usage are the US, India and Brazil. In 2004, Google launched a social networking service called Orkut which was adopted by only Brazil and India. It was huge in these two countries with almost 80% of internet users on it. But, six years later, Orkut started to decline and Facebook overtook it .
Why? Nobody wants to stay where they can't interact with their friends. When young people start using another service, soon, other ages start discovering it. Then, as many people start accepting it, their friends start changing too. So, we have a mass migration.
Will it happen to Instagram? We can help you with some historical data, but we can't predict the future. As Instagram did with Snapchat, it has a chance to succeed against TikTok. But TikTok is much bigger today than Snapchat. So, I can tell you that if you are heavily dependent on Instagram, it is risky to continue with this strategy.
Maybe Instagram is successful now. Who can guarantee the same in the future? It is very important to diversify your acquisition and branding channels. I am not just talking about social media.
Look for other social channels, but ensure a great experience on your website and blog, for example. It is also important to have your own contact list of people interested in what you sell. Therefore, you can send them emails whenever you want without relying only on third-party environments.
Don't rely on just one tactic or source of traffic and acquisition. With a diverse strategy, your business will be safe!
Since 2016, like Snapchat, you can post 15-second videos that disappear after 24 mint database hours. Now, the company has confirmed that it will soon be possible to post 60-second videos on Stories , just like Reels, a feature that — let’s be honest — seems inspired by TikTok.
The news comes in the same quarter that Instagram decided to close IGTV . Of course, as is tradition, the company that aims to make a “revolution” with its metaverse was not so original in this case. Does posting long videos not sound much like YouTube to you?
Fun fact: Before Instagram was acquired for $1 billion in 2012 , the company was already a giant and began developing a mobile app that would allow users to post photos with filters.
Does it remind you of anything?
Yes, in case of failure in the acquisition of Instagram, Facebook already had a "killer" for the real "killer" of everything that annoys Zuckerberg's company. Facebook Camera was launched a month after the acquisition of Instagram and it is something that today almost no one remembers.
This aggressive strategy has turned the service that once featured food “pornography” and hipster-filtered pet photos into something more like Frankenstein. Not in those words, of course, but it’s something that even the company agrees with.
“We’ve made a lot of new bets [on the app] ,” Instagram boss Adam Mosseri told The Verge earlier this year. According to him, “most people” don’t know the difference between videos posted on Instagram and IGTV, for example. “We need to refocus on simplicity and craftsmanship.”
Back to simplicity
Until recently, for videos only, you had four ways to post on Instagram:
Feed;
Stories;
IGTV;
Reels.
All of these were "inspired" by some of its competitors' resources. Photos, which were the core of the social app until the beginning, are still there, but they are not as important to the company as they used to be.
Mosseri said in June that the service is “no longer a photo-sharing app” when explaining video plans: “Let’s be honest, there’s really serious competition right now. TikTok is huge, YouTube is even bigger, and there are a lot of other upstarts as well. People are looking to Instagram for entertainment, there’s tough competition, there’s more to do, and we have to embrace that.”
That will radically change Instagram, according to media experts such as Social Media Today . Closing IGTV was the first step . Now, turning Stories into something very similar to Reels, which Mosseri said no longer made him “happy,” could serve only one purpose:
merge them to offer a simple tool for full-screen video and a near-endless source of entertainment content to scroll through. Like who? TikTok, of course.
Instagram has changed many times. Its logo, at first, was a Polaroid camera, for example. But when the product manager says that the main function of the app is no longer so important and talks specifically about TikTok (competing with YouTube, we already know, they failed), what do you expect to happen?
Original Instagram logo | Source: Reproduction
Why TikTok?
Facebook was created in 2004, less than a year before YouTube. But Facebook was mainly for students at the time. MySpace was the largest social network. And YouTube became world famous before Facebook.
So when Mark Zuckerberg had the strength to fight back against big companies, he looked to other social media services like MySpace and Snapchat, not YouTube. YouTube was acquired by another giant (Google) and had its own strategy to maintain its reign in video.
Facebook has recently tried to compete with YouTube. In 2018, it launched IGTV, an Instagram tool for long-form videos, saying it was “the future of video ,” but it failed and was abandoned last October . In reality, the company was nowhere near a threat to YouTube.
But since Facebook surpassed MySpace in user numbers in 2009, no other social service has come as close to the audiences of its brands, Facebook and Instagram, as TikTok. Don't even think of Twitter, from which Facebook got the "inspiration" for its timeline, or LinkedIn, which also imitated Facebook's feed. These two social services remain niche.
TikTok is getting huge, really huge. And fast. The Chinese app hit 1 billion users in September . That’s close behind Instagram, which has 1.4 billion users today. Facebook remains the largest social platform in the world, with nearly 3 billion users.
What makes TikTok even more impressive is the speed of growth. As we can see in the chart below, it took Facebook almost nine years to reach 1 billion users; for Instagram, almost eight years; for TikTok, just five.
Source: Axios
There are a few other issues. Facebook has been facing controversy for about two months since internal company documents became public showing that its executives knew that its services were causing problems in mental health, democracy and even fueling wars.
Instagram will testify before the US Senate in December 2021 after The Wall Street Journal published internal research showing that one in three girls thinks Instagram makes body image issues worse and that the social app was causing anxiety and depression.
The company was aware of these problems and apparently did little to help its users, thinking more about profit than public welfare. Because of this, fewer and fewer people trust the company , research shows. Facebook was the least trusted social company in research from previous years. And, after that, this number decreased even further.
More than that, Facebook’s services are facing a decline in usage among young people. Today, 63% of Americans between 12 and 17 use TikTok. Among them, only 57% use Instagram, according to Forrester research .
Why is it a problem? Historically, young people are responsible for trends and are more engaged with social media. If they aren't there, people of other ages would start looking for other options that are cooler and more modern. To stop this, Instagram is trying to become TikTok.
What should marketers do?
First off, let’s talk about video. If you still think video is the future of the Internet, change your mind. Video is not the future, it’s the present! According to Cisco , video will be responsible for 82% of Internet traffic next year. So if you haven’t started investing in it yet, you should do so, even if it’s late.
Do you need to be on TikTok? Be careful here. Before you decide, it’s necessary to analyze your brand personality. Is your audience there? Don’t blindly follow trends. It’s not just TikTok that’s growing. YouTube is still huge. But you have other options. Spotify is growing a lot with podcasts , for example. Again, do you need to be there? Ask your audience.
If you're heavily dependent on Instagram, should you be worried? The answer is yes. First, the social media app is changing its core to appeal to younger people. So maybe your audience that loves old photos in the feed will look elsewhere like Pinterest, for example, which continues to grow as a niche service and has more users today than Twitter.
There's another thing. Instagram has been successful in slowing down Snapchat in the past by imitating it. But the same didn't work with YouTube. Yes, the company has a lot of money. But MySpace, sold to News Corp. at a time of great popularity , also had it and was overtaken by Facebook in the past.
We had another similar case around the world. The top countries in social media usage are the US, India and Brazil. In 2004, Google launched a social networking service called Orkut which was adopted by only Brazil and India. It was huge in these two countries with almost 80% of internet users on it. But, six years later, Orkut started to decline and Facebook overtook it .
Why? Nobody wants to stay where they can't interact with their friends. When young people start using another service, soon, other ages start discovering it. Then, as many people start accepting it, their friends start changing too. So, we have a mass migration.
Will it happen to Instagram? We can help you with some historical data, but we can't predict the future. As Instagram did with Snapchat, it has a chance to succeed against TikTok. But TikTok is much bigger today than Snapchat. So, I can tell you that if you are heavily dependent on Instagram, it is risky to continue with this strategy.
Maybe Instagram is successful now. Who can guarantee the same in the future? It is very important to diversify your acquisition and branding channels. I am not just talking about social media.
Look for other social channels, but ensure a great experience on your website and blog, for example. It is also important to have your own contact list of people interested in what you sell. Therefore, you can send them emails whenever you want without relying only on third-party environments.
Don't rely on just one tactic or source of traffic and acquisition. With a diverse strategy, your business will be safe!