Diffusion and Cascades – Tiktok vs. Instagram Reels
TikTok is a social media app used to create and post short clips overlaid with an audio track that has taken off over the past year. It has amassed over 850 million followers, most of which have been garnered over the course of the pandemic. TikTok has become a global phenomenon because of the “algorithm” that it uses to suggest content to its users. When using the app, the first page the user sees is their “For You” page, which, based on the algorithm, curates a feed for each user based on their profile, location, or similar videos they have interacted with in the past (McGlew). Additionally, TikTok has made it a seamless process to create short videos and make any users’ content go viral once in a while. This feature, in a sense, levels the playing field for general daily users making TikTok more appealing, as only influencers or celebrities gain mass attention on other social media platforms.
TikTok is owned by the Chinese company, ByteDance, and a couple months ago, there were serious conversations about banning the app in the United States because of privacy concerns and President Trump ruled it as a threat to national security. As a result, Facebook’s Instagram released a new feature on their app called “Reels,” which mimicked TikTok’s main premise of being able to post short video clips overlaid with an audio clip. Instagram Reels has not gained much traction yet compared to its superior twin, TikTok. In terms of developing content, TikTok makes it much easier to select the highlights of each video, and string them together to match the beat of the audio (Chen). Currently, Instagram still has issues overlaying audio on reels due to third-party copyright infringement. TikTok also makes it easy for content to go viral, whereas Instagram reels only reach a small number of people. Also, on reels, users can only choose if they want everyone on the platform to view their reels, or only their friends, but on TikTok, users have the choice on a video by video basis rather than making a decision based on the entire feed.
As seen in the above image, on TikTok, there is already a large cluster of users on the platform, and there are clusters within that cluster, each comprising people on a certain “side” of TikTok, or people of a similar niche or interests. Other than the fact that TikTok has more polished features compared to that of Instagram Reels, the reason why Reels has not been doing as well as TikTok is because it is harder for people already within a cluster to adopt a new technology with the absence of a strong initial adopter. TikTok’s cluster is so dense causing an extremely high threshold q, meaning that any node, or person, will switch to using Instagram Reels if at least q of its neighbors are using it. Since TikTok’s threshold, or q value, is so high, then many of the users in the TikTok’s cluster must be using Instagram Reels in order to switch. To introduce their feature to the existing clusters, Instagram has been paying influencers and celebrities to post reels on their platform. However, as noted before, Instagram’s reels do not have as high or efficient outreach and distribution of content as TikTok does. Therefore, even if Instagram tries to introduce initial adopters into the network, the lack of viral content, especially that of general users (meaning non-celebrities and non-influencers), will stunt the spread of the Instagram Reels, and the potential cascade of the usage of the new technology.
The other caveat is that using TikTok or Instagram Reels is not mutually exclusive. However, there is still a significant difference between the time users spend on TikTok and Instagram Reels, therefore suggesting which platform they prefer to use to post short video clips. Even though Instagram is paying users to use Reels, those users are still spending more of their time on TikTok, so there isn’t a strong initial adopter that is introduced in the network of TikTok users. In order for the Instagram Reels technology to spread throughout the entire network and cascade, Instagram would need initial TikTok users to spend more time on their own platform, or to switch completely. It would be even more effective for Instagram Reels to convince users with massive followings on Tiktok, or people in the network with millions of neighbors, to completely switch to using Instagram Reels. These influencers probably have stronger ties to other big influencers and their followers in general, so there would be a higher payoff for their neighbors to switch to Reels. To accomplish this, Instagram needs to improve their Reels feature by increasing outreach of content, better facilitating the ability for certain posts to go viral, and ease the process of creating videos overlaid with an audio track.
Sources:
https://later.com/blog/tiktok-algorithm/