CNA Explains: Meta’s revenue has fallen for the first time. Are we so over Facebook and Instagram already?

What’s this about making Instagram Instagram again?

Noticing more short videos or Reels on Facebook and Instagram these days?

That’s Meta increasingly inserting them into your feeds, to match the format which TikTok runs on which is especially popular with younger folks.

The firm has also revamped both Facebook and Instagram to prioritise algorithmic “discovery” and recommendations of new content, instead of posts from accounts which users follow. 

On Instagram – which has announced plans for a more “immersive” TikTok-style layout that fills the entire screen – users have been especially frustrated by a newfound difficulty in finding content posted by friends, family and creators they follow. 

Two of Instagram’s biggest users, celebrities Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner, on Monday shared a viral post calling on the company to “Make Instagram Instagram Again”.

“Stop trying to be TikTok I just want to see cute photos of my friends,” it said.

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri on Tuesday tried to address the complaints by insisting that the platform will continue to support photos as part of its “heritage”.

“That said I need to be honest, I do believe that more and more of Instagram is gonna become video over time,” he added, in a video that attracted thousands of negative comments.

Despite the growing fallout Zuckerberg does not appear to be swayed.

He told employees last month that Reels, while generating more than US$1 billion annually in revenue, was “still only around 15 per cent of the size of TikTok.”

The Meta chief also told investors that about 15 per cent of content on Facebook and Instagram is currently recommended by artificial intelligence from accounts users do not actively follow, and that this percentage would double by the end of 2023.