Instagram boss declares it is no longer a photo-sharing app

Adam Mosseri, Facebook executive for Instagram, told its users that the best reason to use the app is for entertainment

Facebook has focused on competing with TikTok and YouTube in short video clips, so the Instagram director has declared it is no longer a photo sharing app.

Adam Mosseri, Facebook executive for Instagram, said: We are no longer a photo sharing app.

A shift from the roots of what many analysts consider to be Facebook’s most important engine of revenue growth risk of alienation with Instagram’s more than a billion users, in times when young people are already spending more time on other apps.

Instagram also prioritizes private messaging, e-commerce, and influencers over the original mainstay of friends posting photos in feeds, Moseri said in a video Posted online Wednesday and pointed out a huge competition from ByteDance owned Ticktaku.

He told Instagram users in an internal survey that the “best” reason to use the app is to “entertain.”

Social media companies provide entertainment and shopping features and these may be easier to monetize and have less content moderation issues than personal posts.

Meanwhile, many of these personal photos are migrating to Facebook-owned messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Apple’s iMessage, and Telegram. At the same time, new generation social app such as Discord, club house, Popallazzi and BeReal have been attracting attention from venture capitalists after years of declining investment in Facebook’s alternatives.

To be honest, there is a lot of competition right now. TikTok is huge and YouTube is even bigger and there. There are many other start-ups, says Mosseri. It means change on Instagram in the coming months.

Instagram has already added more prominent links to its short video rival, Reels, and Shop, a collection of posts from retailers and influencers. Soon, Mosseri plans to insert more of these types of posts into the main newsfeed, including those from accounts that users haven’t followed yet.

Still, Instagram users generally seem to like the app as it is. The platform is rated 4.7 out of 5 on Apple’s US and UK App Stores, based on over 24 million reviews.