A Tale of Two Brands: Part 1 – Instagram

After announcing in July of last year that Instagram is ‘no longer a photo-sharing app’, Adam Mosseri, the platform’s head, has recently changed his tune, stating that the app has ‘gone too far into video’ in two of his weekly AMAs within the past month. This kind of back-and-forth indecision points to Instagram’s central issue with brand identity, which may prove to be its downfall.

Since 2021, Instagram has embarked on a mission to prioritise video content – a move that is clearly reactive to the success of TikTok. But this shift has only frustrated users, who have been demanding that it returns to its former state. Celeb influencers Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner have decried the change, and there’s even a petition on change.org to ‘Make Instagram Instagram Again’ with over 300,000 signatures. The petition’s tagline declares, ‘stop trying to be tiktok i just want to see cute photos of my friends [sic]’, highlighting users’ dissatisfaction with the new algorithm inundating their feeds with the video content of strangers and companies.