The growth of TikTok had seemed absolutely unstoppable in recent years, so much so that the app from China had left Instagram to a certain extent in the background. However, relying on the phenomenal push of "Reels", a functionality clearly inspired by TikTok, the Meta social network has recovered the ground that the ByteDance subsidiary once stole from it.

Instagram quickly gained popularity after its launch in 2010 and achieved this largely thanks to the landing in its domains of celebrities like the Kardashians and its subsequent metamorphosis into a cornerstone of influencer marketing. Even so, since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, TikTok has managed to steal many spotlights from Instagram.

In 2020, precisely when Instagram saw its throne in danger due to the rise of TikTok, the social network of the empire led by Mark Zuckerberg rushed to launch its own clone of the Chinese app: "Reels." And thanks to this functionality, Instagram gained steam over the last year, enough to surpass TikTok in terms of number of downloads.

Last year, the Instagram app was downloaded 767 million times around the world, 20% more than the previous year. For its part, the TikTok application was downloaded 733 million times worldwide, which translated into a year-on-year growth of just 4%.

In the period between 2018 and 2022, TikTok was uninterruptedly the most downloaded app in the world.
Instagram's wide demographic spectrum is a factor that works in favor of this social network

According to the market research company Sensor Tower, Instagram's resurgence has probably been spurred by "Reels" and other features such as "Stories", which the Meta subsidiary launched inspired by Snapchat.

Instagram would also have benefited from having reacted quickly enough to the TikTok threat, emphasizes Farhad Divecha, marketing director of the digital marketing agency Accuracast, in statements to The Guardian. And the wide demographic spectrum with which this social network manages to connect also helps, says Divecha.

"If there is something that I think clearly favors Instagram, it is that it appeals to a much broader audience, and it does not have the connotation that it is only for very young people that many blame on TikTok," says Divecha.

On the other hand, and according to data held by Sensor Tower, Instagram has almost 1.5 billion active monthly users, while TikTok has more than 1.1 billion active monthly users. The Chinese social network boasts, however, of having more active users who invest an average of 95 minutes a day in the application, compared to the 62 minutes a day that people dedicate to Instagram.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, Instagram's parent company, has not been shy about recognizing that TikTok is a very strong rival. And in 2022 he assured that platforms like TikTok were indeed "growing very fast." That same year it was also claimed that Meta had paid a consulting firm to generate distrust around its competitor.

In the United States, TikTok is facing increasing pressure from Congress, which is currently drafting a bill to force ByteDance to sell the famous social network in less than six months or risk being banned from US soil. The United States Lower House suspects that TikTok could be providing access to its users' data to the Chinese Government, with which the social network would have very close ties.

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