Is Instagram Over?

Instagram has long been the go-to platform for Millennials; its photo-centric approach that showcases a perfectly curated feed has long been popular with users. It’s still the third most downloaded app of 2021, has 1 billion active monthly users, and is estimated to be worth over $100 billion dollars. But TikTok is giving the app a run for its money, creators are increasingly vocal about the hardships they face being at the mercy of the algorithm, and whistleblowers within the company are speaking out about its known negative mental health consequences. It leads us to wonder: Is the end near for Instagram? 

Despite the known ills of and grievances with the platform, the app is so central to the experience of being online that its outage on Monday October 4th sent shockwaves through the internet. In fact, the 6-hour outage across all the Facebook owned platforms (Instagram, Facebook, WeChat) cost the company $100M dollars. As people found themselves surprised at how lost they were without Instagram, perhaps no one felt this harder than small business owners who rely on the platform for their sales. (A fantastic reminder to prioritize your OWNED PLATFORMS!)

We often say things are “over” when they’ve lost their novelty or cool factor but that doesn’t mean they cease to be profitable. Instagram isn’t “over” but the golden age of the platform as THE destination for aesthetic visuals definitely is. As we recently covered for you, Instagram has shifted its priorities to compete with the likes of TikTok and it can still be a funnel for your brand (hopefully to your owned platforms) if you are willing to adapt to succeed with the algorithm. 

The thing is, there is a generation of people who still crave the original use case of Instagram: creating & looking at a feed of curated pretty pictures. As any Y2K teen will remember, Instagram wasn’t the first online destination for a feed of photos. There were sites like Flickr, WeHeartIt, and Tumblr -- to name a few -- that housed galleries upon galleries of images for users to organize or curate to express themselves. In pivoting so completely to video, Instagram has lost this original use case almost entirely. 

So where are these users going? A few places such as VSCO, back to Tumblr, and our personal favorite, Pinterest. Yes, if you (and your brand) are missing the aesthetic creativity of the old Instagram look no further than Pinterest -- which is leaning into the space that Instagram has vacated. 

While it’s no Instagram in terms of reach, Pinterest has 459 million monthly active users. Though this was largely due to recent international growth in 2020, the platform also boosted 98 million international users representing an 11% growth in 2020. In short: Pinterest is big and only getting bigger. Furthermore, if your brand’s target audience skews young and female, the platform already has them; 30.4% of Pinterest’s ad audience is women aged 25-34. 

TL;DR: Instagram might not be “over” just yet, but it’s a fickle beast that could be at any moment -- so diversify your content strategy as much as possible. And, if you’re looking for an outlet for the more creative, curative, and aesthetic side of social media marketing, consider diversifying to Pinterest.