Internal Meta documents detail Instagram's struggle to compete with TikTok; users spend 17.6M hours per day watching Reels, far below TikTok's 197.8M hours
Reels faces formidable competition from the leading short-video platform; creators follow the views Tweets: @sal19 , @mrinaldesai , @stevekovach , @jeffhorwitz , @newley , @newley , @newley , @reaganbrad , @newley , @eliotwb , @firstadopter , and @caseynewton See also Mediagazer Tweets: Sal Rodriguez / @sal19 : Instagram users spend 17.6 million hours/day watching Reels vs 197.8 million hours/day TikTok users spend on that app, according to an internal Meta document titled “Creators x Reels State of the Union 2022” https://www.wsj.com/... with @MeghanBobrowsky & @JeffHorwitz @mrinaldesai : TikTok sends meta reeling? Or should reels be renamed to insTok? https://twitter.com/... Steve Kovach / @stevekovach : Meta's own report: “most Reels users have no engagement whatsoever.” https://twitter.com/... Jeff Horwitz / @jeffhorwitz : After two years of pushing Instagram Reels, only a fifth of IG creators are creating the short form videos. Per internal analysis we obtained, the creator tools are inferior to TikTok's and engagement trends are... rough. https://t.co/5EYborTeje Newley Purnell / @newley : One reason is that Instagram has struggled to recruit people to make content. Roughly 11 million creators are on the platform in the U.S., but only about 2.3 million of them, or 20.7%, post on that platform each month, the document said. Newley Purnell / @newley : The document, titled “Creators x Reels State of the Union 2022,” was published internally in August. It said that Reels engagement had been falling—down 13.6% over the previous four weeks—and that “most Reels users have no engagement whatsoever.” Newley Purnell / @newley : Mark Zuckerberg is betting Meta's near-term future on Instagram Reels, the feature he touts as the answer to TikTok. But the company's internal research shows Meta has a lot of catching up to do. New from @sal19 @MeghanBobrowsky @JeffHorwitz: https://www.wsj.com/... Brad Reagan / @reaganbrad : Internal documents show in brutal detail how badly Instagram continues to trail TikToK. Oof: “most Reels users have no engagement whatsoever.” Lots of scoopiness in this one from @sal19 @MeghanBobrowsky @JeffHorwitz https://www.wsj.com/... Newley Purnell / @newley : Meta spokeswoman Devi Narasimhan characterized the data about viewing hours as outdated and not global in scope, but declined to disclose other numbers. She said Reels engagement currently is up, on a month-to-month basis. Eliot Brown / @eliotwb : https://www.wsj.com/... https://twitter.com/... Tae Kim / @firstadopter : “Reels engagement had been falling—down 13.6% over the previous four weeks—and that “most Reels users have no engagement whatsoever.” https://www.wsj.com/... Casey Newton / @caseynewton : Reels had a bad August, which surprised me, since about half of the ‘suggested posts’ in my Instagram feed are Reels https://www.wsj.com/... https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer