Instagram Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Adam Mosseri believes that TikTok is the "most formidable competitor ever" that the social media platform have ever seen. In an interview with CNBC, Mosseri described the Chinese video-sharing platform as a company that's "very focused", "determined" and that "they execute incredibly well." He also said that they deserve due credit for pioneering the short-form video format.
Earlier in August, in a bid to cover the ground lost to TikTok, Instagram launched 'Reels', a short-form video section in the app that mimics their rivals. They announced on Thursday their plans to merge Reels with online shopping, which will enable creators and businesses to tag 'products' in the video and purchase them upon tapping the tag.
Mosseri characterised this move as a long-term one and said that it is "primarily interested in helping them better make a living" and "an important part of the future of shopping." He added that the scale of the task at hand is massive, and would require investment in and development of infrastructure to make this happen.
“This is us trying to playing catch-up in a lot of ways, build out a suite of features for creators to inspire them to use our platform more, because without compelling content there’s no reason to go to Reels in the first place,” he said.
His comments come at a time when parent company Facebook is expecting lawsuits from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over what they allege to be the Mark Zuckerberg-led company's monopoly in social media, a part of which was gained by acquisitions such as Instagram. If the judgment does not fall in Facebook's favour, they could be ordered to divest in Instagram, which Mosseri believes will have serious ramifications for their staff and users.
He pointed out that there were more engineers in Facebook assigned to safety and integrity than there were engineers alone in his company. He stressed on how the collaboration with Facebook's staff and resources have helped Instagram go from strength since they were acquired by Facebook eight years ago.