Reels launched in 2020, meant to be a direct competitor to the wildly popular TikTok. Instagram launched a bonus program for creators in July, part of parent company Facebook’s (now Meta) plan to pay $1 Billion to creators through 2022, and has offered creators with high follower counts as much as $35,000 in bonuses to create Reels.
First off, on text-to-speech – as you can see in the example screens below, the new option will give Reels creators two voice options to choose from, with the auto voice then reading out any text that you’ve added to your clip.
Meanwhile, TikTok has evolved its text-to-speech feature with specialized character voices; on Friday it introduced text-to-speech voices from Disney characters including Stitch, Chewbacca, Rocket Raccoon, and others.
Image Source: @creators
Which, as noted before, is probably not the most effective way for Instagram to try and win back the youth, which Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently noted is a key focus for the company. After research showed that Meta is losing ground among younger audiences, Zuckerberg said that it will look to put more emphasis on winning over these key usage groups – but the problem is that TikTok is now the leader for this cohort, in many respects, and as such, playing catch-up has Meta constantly on the back foot, even if it does need to maintain a level of parity to match up with the competition.
If Instagram is always copying, then it’s inevitably always a step behind.
Which means it’s never going to be the trend leader, and the cool place to engage for younger audiences. Users know that it’s simply copying TikTok, which really just further solidifies TikTok’s leadership. If Meta really wants to win over these groups. It’ll need to come out with more new, original ideas for its tools – which, as we’ve seen over the past decade, Meta is not exactly great at.
Replication, sure – Meta has done that over and over again, but what original ideas has Facebook or Instagram added that really caught on and became a leading trend in their own right?
Social Media expert, Andrew Hutchinson comments, “I can’t think of any – all of Instagram’s innovations have been inspired by Snapchat, TikTok, Houseparty and others. IGTV was probably the closest to an original idea, but that ended up not working out, and was really inspired by YouTube. Saved Stories on user profiles, maybe?”
If Meta wants to win, it needs to take the lead back, which will require new, original functions that will bring more people back to the app.
Can Meta do it? Does it have the capacity to come up with new ideas that will catch on? Recent history would suggest probably not, but it clearly has the capacity, and potential.
But, in essence, replication like this is just clinging to the latest trends, which is not enough at this stage.
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