The triumph of the Chinese short video platform TikTok appears to be stalling. Last year, Instagram was significantly more successful in terms of downloads of new apps and the speed of growth.
Is the successful streak of the Chinese video platform TikTok over? Instagram overtook TikTok last year – both in terms of growth speed and the number of downloads. This is reported by the “Financial Times” (FT), which quotes from a current market analysis by the market and data analyst Sensor Tower.
According to the market research company, the total number of app downloads from Instagram in 2023 rose by 20 percent to 768 million compared to the previous year. This makes the Instagram app the most downloaded app in the world. TikTok downloads only increased by four percent to 733 million in the same period. This could indicate that TikTok has reached the peak of growth.
Has Instagram successfully copied TikTok?
According to the FT, the success is due to the fact that Instagram, similar to TikTok, now relies on short videos, so-called Reels, and thus copies the recipe of its Chinese rival. “Instagram has surpassed TikTok in adoption in recent years, driven by the popularity of its Reels feature along with older social media features and functionality,” the FT quoted Abraham Yousef, senior insights manager at Sensor Tower, as saying.
Mark Shmulik, an expert at the investment company Bernstein, explains to the FT that Instagram has successfully retained existing users in its app through its offering in the short videos segment. This means that there is no incentive for the next group of potential TikTok users to leave Instagram.
Shmulik added that influencers are also increasingly turning to Instagram because content creators can monetize their content better there.
Concerns about data collection by Chinese authorities
According to Statista, the Instagram parent company Meta is extremely successful in the ranking of the most successful social networks and messenger services. In terms of the number of monthly active users in January, Facebook was at the top with around 3.05 billion, far ahead of YouTube with 2.5 billion.
Behind them are the meta subsidiaries Instagram and WhatsApp, each with 2 billion uses. TikTok is in sixth place with almost 1.6 billion.
TikTok is the only successful online platform in the West that does not come from the USA. There are concerns, especially in the USA, but also in Europe, that the app could be misused by Chinese authorities to collect information about users. Governments of several countries and the EU Commission therefore banned the use of TikTok on work cell phones.
Who owns ByteDance?
US politicians are therefore debating a possible TikTok ban. In the US House of Representatives, Republicans and Democrats are working together on a bill that would give TikTok-owning company ByteDance almost six months to relinquish control of the popular app. Otherwise, TikTok risks being banned from the app stores in the USA. According to its own information, the service has 170 million users there.
TikTok rejects concerns and emphasizes that it does not see itself as a subsidiary of a Chinese company. ByteDance is 60 percent owned by Western investors. The company headquarters are on the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean. Critics counter that the Chinese founders, with a share of 20 percent, maintained control thanks to higher voting rights and that ByteDance has a large headquarters in Beijing.