🚨 Instagram walks back its changes

I think what is happening is people think of us as a feed app, because we started as a feed app. When we launched Instagram, there were no stories, there were no DMs. What's happened over the last decade is that how people share with friends has changed. It has shifted to stories, and it has shifted to DMs and to group chats. More photos and videos... See more

And yes, creators need some stability, they need distribution, they need some predictability in their income, they need to be able to feel like they're staying safe. They need to be able to feel like they can express themselves comfortably. And so I'm trying to meet all of those needs, for all creators. I want to be clear I care about big creators ... See more

I think one of the most important things is that we help new talent find an audience. I care a lot about large creators; I would like to do better than we have historically by smaller creators. I think we've done pretty well by large creators overall — I'm sure some people will disagree, but in general, that's what the data suggests. I don't think ... See more

I do think the heart of Instagram has been about helping you connect with the people that you love and care about, and the interests that you have. And that has stayed true. How to connect you with the people you care about, and how to connect you with your interests, I think is going to continue to change. Because how people communicate with their... See more

Which then begs the question, what's the future of feed? And in a world where more of the friend content has gone from feed into stories and DMs, I think that feed is going to become more public in nature. We want to steer it, to the degree we can, towards creators and individuals, and less towards publishers and institutions.

“When you discover something in your feed that you didn't follow before, there should be a high bar — it should just be great,” Mosseri said. “You should be delighted to see it. And I don't think that’s happening enough right now. So I think we need to take a step back, in terms of the percentage of feed that are recommendations, get better at rank... See more

I want to still not only support photos, but continue to do great work in the photo space. But we've done great work for photos historically. We haven't done great work for video. So we need to catch up there. Swimming against that trend, I think, is going to be really bad for Instagram long term. We could just not enable videos. We could not try t... See more

Mosseri made clear that the retreat Instagram announced today is not permanent. Threats to the company’s dominance continue to mount: TikTok is the most downloaded app in the world, the most popular website, and the most watched video company. Meanwhile, Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature has blown a $10 billion hole in Meta’s core advertisi... See more

Which then begs the question, what's the future of feed? And in a world where more of the friend content has gone from feed into stories and DMs, I think that feed is going to become more public in nature. We want to steer it, to the degree we can, towards creators and individuals, and less towards publishers and institutions.