Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
If you thought there’s no corner on Instagram without ads, you’re wrong, my good friend. Meta can always make room for more, and that’s exactly what it’s about to do.
As the company is struggling with a major financial loss, it needs a way to generate more revenue. So, Instagram is about to get even more ads, and they’re going to be everywhere.
After Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, now it’s Twitter’s turn to copy TikTok’s short-form videos. That’s right, from now on, you can also go to Twitter and waste hours watching short vertical clips. And pretty much like Instagram, Twitter will also force its version of “Reels” upon you in the Explore tab.
In an attempt to be as popular as TikTok, Instagram has been pushing Reels in every possible way. One would say that the platform is seeing a benefit from turning almost everything into a Reel. However, judging from a recently leaked report, this isn’t quite true. It’s exactly the opposite.
According to the report, Instagram users are not really spending much time watching TikTok-esque short-form videos. What’s more. it appears that most Reels users “have no engagement whatsoever.”
Instagram likes Reels. It likes them so much that it turns all your videos into them, and now it lets you cross-post them to Facebook too. From now on, if you use both social media apps, you can post your Reels directly to both of them.
Along with cross-posting between the apps, some other changes are coming to Instagram as well. And yes, of course, they’re Reels-related. But if you’ve started gathering likes and comments through the TikTok-esque short videos, you may actually like these.
I don’t remember people complaining more about Instagram ever since its algorithm-based Feed replaced the chronological one. But it looks like users are fed up with the app’s efforts to become a poor copy of TikTok. So fed up, in fact, that it made Instagram ditch the changes it’s been making to the app recently. Or at least they’re ditching them until the dust settles.
I’ve noticed lately that a lot of Instagram users have been complaining about the reach they get on photos. I experienced it myself: the reach on Reels with absolutely the same subject is much higher, even though I’m way better at taking photos than I am at making Reels.
There has been a lot of criticism about this, and a recent report even suggests that Instagram cuts your reach for photos by 44%. It looks like the company’s CEO Adam Mosseri couldn’t ignore the backlash anymore. So, he recently responded to it in a video, saying that Instagram will keep supporting photos but that “it needs to evolve.”
It’s not a secret that Instagram has been prioritizing Reels over photos for quite a while now. I’ve seen many creators and artists switching to TikTok-esque short-form videos, complaining that they feel like they need to do it if they want to keep their reach.
As a recent report shows, it’s not merely a feeling. Social media marketing platform Later did a thorough analysis of Instagram content to compare the reach of traditional posts between 2019 and 2022. As it appears, the reach for traditional posts decreased by 44%! Could Reels be to blame?
Instagram really, really wants you to post Reels. It wants it so much that all your videos are now automatically being turned into them.
At the moment, some users are unable to post videos unless they’re in the Reels form. Social media consultant Matt Navarra spotted it first and shared a screenshot on Twitter. And Meta later confirmed – all videos are taking the new form.
Instagram has recently unveiled a host of new features with its latest updates. From increased reel length to the ability to pin specific images to the top of your profile, the new features will give users more flexibility of options in how their profile appears.
Firsly, the length of reels has increased to a maximum of 90 seconds. The other major change to reels is that now users have the ability to import audio. Another new feature coming to reels is stickers. You can now stick them onto a reel, rather than just using them in stories. So your cat videos can now be longer, we can hear the cute purring, and they can have kitty stickers on top. Awesome!
Ever since TikTok became a giant in the social media world, Instagram has been trying hard to be more like it. So it’s probably not a surprise that Meta has introduced a new set of Reels options that remind us of features we’ll also find on TikTok.
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