Meta-owned photo-sharing platform, Instagram has begun testing a new full-screen version of the feed that is similar to TikTok.
Meta’s growing insistence on being more like TikTok has led to it borrowing a lot of features from the popular Chinese content hosting service, owned by ByteDance.
The feed has been in testing since last month, but the updated version that Mark Zuckerberg shared through his account now shows the posts go full screen, ANI reported from Washington.
Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg said that a short-video service like Instagram Reels would be instrumental in taking on the likes of TikTok, which has over one billion active monthly users. He said that Meta faced an “unprecedented level of competition” from TikTok.
This has brought a lot of changes for Instagram, like Reels, which enables users to post 15-second videos, Remix that’s a Reels feature allowing users to record new videos mixed with videos from others, and Visual Replies, which is yet another Reels feature that lets users comment on videos.
Meta has also made it clear that they will start inserting more Reels and algorithmic content into user feeds, and the platform itself will pivot to videos in place of images.
“We want to make it easier to discover content and connect with friends,” wrote Zuckerberg in his tweet. He said that Instagram still values photos and they were “an important part of Instagram” and they were “working on ways to improve the way they show up in a full-screen Feed too”.
For now, the new full-screen mode is in limited testing, and “some people will start seeing this test soon”.