Adam Mosseri posted a video in June saying Instagram is "no longer a photo-sharing app." He said it with the confidence of a man who has clearly never been told no by anyone in his professional life. The internet roared. Photographers revolted. The Kardashians kept posting Reels.
And I thought: this is the most fascinating brand identity crisis playing out in public since New Coke.
When Glossier built a $1.2 billion valuation primarily through Instagram, they proved that a feed could be a storefront, a community, and a brand manifesto simultaneously. Their comments section did more brand-building than most companies' entire marketing budgets.
Here is what is happening. TikTok ate Instagram's lunch, dinner, and late-night snack. Instagram's response has been to become TikTok, which is the strategic equivalent of Pepsi responding to Coca-Cola by putting their soda in a red can. You are not competing. You are conceding.
The problem is not that Instagram added video. Video is fine. The problem is that Instagram abandoned the thing that made it Instagram. The curated grid. The visual identity. The aesthetic intentionality that made it the platform of choice for brands, creators, and anyone who cared about how things looked.
That was their white space. That was their differentiation. And they are actively destroying it to chase a format that TikTok already owns.
From a brand strategy perspective, this is textbook. When you see a competitor succeeding, the instinct is to copy. But copying tells your audience that you do not believe your own value proposition. It tells them that what you were offering before was not good enough. It tells them to go to the original.
I have watched this play out with clients a hundred times. A luxury brand sees a fast-fashion competitor gaining share and panics into discounting. A premium restaurant sees a casual spot going viral and adds a secret menu. Every time, they erode the exact thing that made them worth choosing in the first place.
The answer to competitive pressure is never to become your competitor. It is to become more of yourself.
Instagram should have leaned harder into what TikTok could never be: beautiful, curated, intentional visual storytelling. Instead, they are force-feeding Reels into every corner of the app like a desperate dinner party host who keeps refilling your glass when you clearly said you were fine.
Instagram should have leaned harder into what TikTok could never be: beautiful, curated, intentional visual storytelling.
The creators I follow are already splitting their presence. Instagram for the portfolio. TikTok for the personality. That bifurcation should terrify Meta. Because when your platform becomes a secondary channel, you are one algorithm change away from irrelevance.
But what do I know. I am just a strategist who still posts photos of her cat on the grid like it is 2016.