After all, Instagram isn't losing the social media platform war.
The app far surpassed TikTok in global downloads last year, according to data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Sensor Tower estimates that Instagram downloads will increase by 20% in 2023 compared to the previous year. TikTok only grew by 4% over the same period, and the growth in daily active users has also plateaued.
why? The simplest explanation is that Reels, Instagram's short video product, is about as good as TikTok at the moment. Instagram also has more powerful photo tools that users want. And unlike TikTok, it has recently been careful not to push unpopular features like shoppable videos on users.
“Instagram already has Reels and has other social media features, so it already caters to a wide audience,” said Abe Youssef, senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower. did. “Even if you’re not necessarily a fan of Reels, you might be a fan of the main feed, photo sharing, and the legacy social media features, Stories and Chat.”
For example, TikTok doesn't yet allow group chats. As stated by top meta executives like Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram's Adam Mosseri, DMs are where the majority of Reels are shared.
“TikTok is also slowing down from an engagement standpoint,” Youssef said.
TikTok may have realized that its limited photo capabilities were hurting overall engagement. An analysis of the code revealed by tech blog The SpAndroid suggests that the company may be working on a dedicated photo app.
Neither TikTok nor Instagram responded to requests for comment.
Here are three key takeaways from our Sensor Tower analysis:
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TikTok is still gaining users, but at a slower pace. According to Sensor Tower, TikTok's global monthly active users (MAUs for short) grew 2% year over year in Q4 2023. This is a slight decrease from his 6% increase in the same quarter in 2022 and an even larger decrease from his 47-year increase. His MAU increase (%) for that quarter of 2021.
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While Instagram has surpassed TikTok in downloads, the latter has lost some of its luster as a new app. And Mark Zuckerberg is probably smiling about that somewhere. According to Sensor Tower estimates, his Instagram's global downloads in 2023 exceeded 767 million, an increase of 20% from the previous year. However, TikTok recorded 733 million downloads worldwide during the same period.
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Although TikTok's growth appears to have plateaued, users remain hooked. Sensor Tower estimates that TikTok users spent an average of 95 minutes a day on the app in Q4 2023, or just over an hour and a half per day. This is the length of a feature film (or at least the length of the film before the editor stops editing it). Meanwhile, users spent about 1 hour on Instagram and 53 minutes on Facebook every day.
