How would you feel if the Reels feed was the first thing you saw when you opened up the Instagram app? In India, users are getting a taste of what that layout looks like.
A “small group of people in India” now have access to a redesigned Instagram that puts Reels and DMs front and center. Those two tabs are the first ones the test subjects see when they open the app, though a visit to the Home tab will offer access to friends’ photo posts.
It’s no coincidence that Instagram has emphasized Reels and DMs at the expense of other content formats, including its traditional photo posts. That shifting focus has been widely understood as Meta’s attempt to match TikTok by copying some of its signature figures.
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Users have not been happy with that pivot to video, and Instagram Head Adam Mosseri knows it. That’s why, after the launch of the experimental redesign, Mosseri took to Threads to get ahead of the inevitable criticism. He returned to his usual defense of Instagram’s TikTok-style features: They prioritize the types of consumption that are most common among the app’s users.
“A great way to get a lot of heat is to redesign an app used by a few billion people, so I don’t take this idea lightly,” Mosseri wrote. “Reels and DMs have driven most all our growth at Instagram over the last few years, so we are exploring making them the first two tabs. This is just an *option* available to a small group of people in India starting today. Photos from accounts you follow are still in the home tab. If you do opt-in, you can opt right out if you’re not into it. We’ll see if anyone is into it…”
It’s hard to say whether Mosseri’s claims about user behavior are accurate, since Instagram has pushed Reels so hard that the format has become hard to avoid. But even after admitting that Instagram has “overfocused” on videos in the past, Mosseri and his team are doubling down. If Reels are not going to get their own app, then they’re going to take up prime real estate on the main Instagram feed.
On another note, the redesigned layout — which, to be clear, is nothing more than a test at this point — could be a sign that Instagram doesn’t think TikTok’s regulatory troubles are far from over. Though it looks like the U.S. ban threat will be averted, the Trump-ified version of TikTok might not sit well with many Americans. In that case, Instagram could be in line to claim some displaced users, but only if it makes its experience as similar to TikTok as possible.
