Facebook is testing radical innovations to Instagram to perform it more like TikTok

Facebook’s head of Instagram on Wednesday declared the social network intends to begin showing clients full-screen, suggested videos in their feeds.

“We’re also going to be experimenting with how do we embrace video more broadly — full screen, immersive, entertaining, mobile-first video,” Mosseri said in a video posted on Wednesday. “You’ll see us do a number of things, or experiment with a number of things in this space over the coming months.”

In particular, Mosseri said Instagram has plans to show clients full-screen videos in their feeds. This incorporates videos it prescribes to clients, including those from accounts they don’t as of now follow. Clients will begin to see Instagram’s experiments with these progressions throughout the next few months, he said.”We’re no longer a photo-sharing app or a square photo-sharing app,” Mosseri said.

This represents an extraordinary shift for Instagram, which now primarily been an application where clients can see square-sized pictures from their companions and accounts they follow. The change in content presentation will align Instagram in more direct competition to Chinese-owned TikTok, an upstart in the social app market.

Mosseri explicitly featured TikTok just as YouTube, which is possessed by Google, as serious competitors and reasons for these changes.

“Let’s be honest, there’s some really serious competition right now,” he said. “TikTok is huge, YouTube is even bigger, and there’s lots of other upstarts as well.”

As of now, Instagram has focused on rivaling TikTok by launching Reels in August 2020. Reels is a short-form video include that permits Instagram clients to make content with overlaid audio and augmented reality effects, much as they as of now can on TikTok.

“People are looking to Instagram to be entertained, there’s stiff competition and there’s more to do,” Mosseri said. “We have to embrace that, and that means change.”