Photo Credit: Shift
Instagram is prepping a new push to entice TikTok creators away from the platform as the site remains in limbo in the United States. While Trump offered a second extension on the TikTok ban, the increasing trade war between the US and China has left dim prospects of a deal materializing.
Instagram is looking to appeal to creators who want a platform whose stability in the United States is not in question. They’ve added an iPad app and have worked on improving search functionality on the platform to help creators surface content based on specific search terms. While it may not sound like much, that last bit is very important. 74% of Gen Z users report using TikTok as their main search engine—even favoring it over Google.
Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said on a recent episode of the ‘Build Your Tribe’ podcast that the platform is actively seeking to improve search. “We’re…starting to invest more in search on Instagram because there’s so much amazing content,” Mosseri said. “Quite frankly, what we call content search—as opposed to searching for an account, actually searching for some type of content—it’s not very good on Instagram.”
It’s nice to see Mosseri address Instagram’s lack of quality search filters, such a filters by time posted or posts that mention a specific keyword. Mosseri says part of the issue is that the team that works on search for Instagram has been relatively small until recently.
“It’s a long road, but I do think that could also be a really good one for people who are looking for things,” Mosseri continues. “You can imagine, whatever you use Instagram for, it’d be great to be able to find ‘that’ more easily. But also for creators…it should allow content to resurface so that you don’t get all the value in those first 24 to 48 hours.”
It will be interesting to see if Instagram can compete with TikTok in the realm of super fans. Super fans who want to see ALL of the content available from their favorite K-pop group have a much easier time doing that on TikTok compared to Instagram—mostly because TikTok has built out search features that can resurface old content with specific keywords in a way that Instagram just doesn’t.
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