Mark Zuckerberg says Instagram Reels are booming despite celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner slamming the app for being like TikTok

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Reels are becoming more popular, but Kim Kardashian said she wants more “cute photos” on Instagram.Getty Images

• Mark Zuckerberg said reels on Instagram and Facebook are becoming increasingly popular.

• Users played more than 140 billion reels on Facebook and Instagram every day, he said.

• Celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner said they wanted more “cute photos” on Instagram.

Instagram Reels is taking off, though celebrities have criticized the app for acting like TikTok, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday.

Reels, a short-form video feature on Instagram and Facebook, was compared to the format of Chinese video platform TikTok. Critics have slammed Instagram’s push for more video content.

During Meta’s third-quarter earnings conference call, Zuckerberg said reel production and consumption increased as users played more than 140 billion reels daily on Facebook and Instagram.

He said that’s a 50% increase from six months ago, adding, “On Instagram alone, people are already sharing Reels a billion times a day via DMs.”

The video feature is “incremental” for users spending time on Instagram and Facebook, Zuckerberg said. “The trends are looking good here, and we think we’re winning the time we’re spending on competitors like TikTok.”

Meta chose to take a more than $500 million quarterly revenue slump, Zuckerberg said, because they weren’t yet generating as much ad revenue as Stories or Feeds.

“I think that’s clearly the right thing to do to allow Reels to grow with the demand that we’re seeing, but closing that gap is also a high priority,” he said.

While the Meta boss said Reels allow users to find new hobbies and connect with creators and businesses, some celebrities disagree.

After Meta announced it would emphasize videos over photos, Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner, who both have more than 300 million Instagram users, posted an image to their Stories in July telling Instagram to “stop trying to be TikTok to be”, which caused other users to do the same.

“Make Instagram Instagram again (stop trying to be TikTok. I just want to see cute photos of my friends).

The story goes on

Instagram pulled the plug on plans three days after Jenner and Kardashian posted the warning on their stories.

Meta didn’t immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

According to an internal company report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal in September, Instagram users spent less than 18 million hours a day watching videos. By comparison, TikTok users spent almost 200 million hours scrolling through the app every day, according to the Journal.

A meta spokesman told Insider at the time that the journal’s report “used outdated and, in some cases, incorrect data to paint a false picture of our progress at Reels.”

Read the original article on Business Insider