Instagram users of both the famous and nonfamous varieties have recently reached a tipping point, becoming fed up with the app for not serving them the very content the social media platform was built upon—photos of friends and family.
Following the app’s recent algorithm shift in June and a renewed emphasis on video content, the public decided to make their complaints loud and clear earlier this month, sharing a viral image by @illumitati that proclaimed “Make Instagram Instagram Again (stop trying to be TikTok I just want to see cute pictures of my friends.) Sincerely, Everyone.” The photo was even reposted by a handful of celebrities, including Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner, who each added a “pleasssee” alongside their Instagram Stories petition. But according to experts, the platform’s problem isn’t just a pivot to video, but also a radical drop in engagement (likes, comments, views, etc.). Which raises the question, Is the Kardashian family’s recent digital protest a sincere effort to shape the future of the social media app they helped build, or just a cynical ploy to save their many businesses that rely on the platform for continued survival?
Back in January, Instagram made a lot of users very happy by bringing back its original chronological feed. However, much of that goodwill was squandered earlier this summer when the company updated its algorithm yet again, this time announcing some very unpopular changes. These updates included putting more of the platform’s algorithmic power behind Reels, especially for small business accounts; giving users the opportunity to post videos up to 90 seconds long for the first time; and giving priority to those with the longest watch times. They also announced that the app would begin testing a new full-screen format for both photo and video that looks very similar to the layout of TikTok.
In response to all the criticism these updates unleashed, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, shared a video on the platform at the end of July acknowledging the changes and admitting that some of them are “not yet good.” But Mosseri explained that Instagram still thinks the future of the platform is video-based, as that’s what people post, like, consume, and share the most on the platform. “So we’re going to have to lean into that shift while continuing to support photos,” he said. “We’re going to stay committed to creators more broadly. We’re going to stay committed to supporting photos. We’re going to stay in a place where we try and put your friend’s content at the top of Feed and at the front of Stories whenever possible. But we’re also going to need to evolve, because the world is changing quickly and we’re going to have to change along with it.”
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However, a couple of days and even more backlash later, Mosseri seemed to rethink his company’s strategy a bit, adding in an interview with Platformer, “I’m glad we took a risk—if we’re not failing every once in a while, we’re not thinking big enough or bold enough. But we definitely need to take a big step back and regroup.” What that means in concrete terms for users: A test version of the app that made photos and videos full-screen will be phased out this month, and Instagram will also be reducing the number of recommended posts in the app as it works on improving those algorithms.
In terms of what’s currently going wrong over on Instagram, Conor Begley—cofounder of influencer platform Tribe Dynamics and chief strategy officer at CreatorIQ, which provides marketing services for influencers—explains that the recent changes “can be interpreted as a move to remain competitive with TikTok…. Mounting enthusiasm for short-form video content on TikTok, particularly among influencers, likely prompted Instagram to begin supporting the fan-favorite format on its own platform.”
Luke Lintz, the cofounder (with brother Jordan) and CEO of HighKey Enterprises, a digital branding company, agrees that while the move is clearly an attempt to win back some of the audience Instagram lost to TikTok, it’s also just one more in a long line of rushed and ill-considered moves by the platform over the last decade that are getting on users’ last nerve. “What Instagram has done throughout its entire existence since 2010 is constantly add on features and change up their platform to compete with other social media platforms,” Luke says. But this time, he explains, “it’s kind of like the straw that broke the camel’s back in terms of decreased engagement and making this huge transition that doesn’t address the real problems that the biggest people on the platform are having. That’s why we saw the backlash of major celebrities.” Because along with the company’s emphasis on video content came a serious drop-off in interactions as the platform continues to tinker with its algorithm. Luke explained that back when the pivot to video happened in June or July of 2021, HighKey saw its clients’ engagement numbers fall by half.
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But while major celebrities may be speaking out about their thirst traps’ getting fewer likes as well as the utter lack of photographs they’re seeing on their feed, it seems most haven’t actually been affected by these recent changes, least of all the Kardashians. Jordan Lintz, who is responsible for much of HighKey’s celebrity outreach, explained that when it comes to the company’s super A-list clientele, everything’s been business as usual. “They don’t care,” he said. “They’re going to charge the exact same.”
Luke adds that many stars of that caliber have management protecting their interests and their accounts are run more like a corporation—thus their rate is fixed and independent of fluctuations in engagement numbers. For example, HighKey Enterprises recently reached out to Kim Kardashian to work with her on a giveaway only to discover that her going rate is around $600,000 for a single Instagram post—and is nonnegotiable even if her actual level of engagement and audience reach don’t support that figure. “The reason celebrities can justify these higher costs is because they work and get brand deals with Fortune 500 companies that will say yes to practically any price point,” Luke explained. But when it comes to B-list stars and lower, to say nothing of aspiring online personalities, Jordan explains that drop in engagement can be a killer. He estimates that it could decrease one of their smaller client’s paychecks by as much as a third, making a career as a professional influencer almost impossible to attain.
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So even though Kim and Kylie are complaining right alongside the rest of us, Jordan explains, “They’re genuinely just annoyed [with Instagram]; it’s not hitting their money.” Luke suggests that one way the Kardashian family might be vulnerable to these changes in the algorithm is via their many lifestyle brands that are dependent on the platform for sales; he speculates that up to 75% of their business is driven by Instagram. “Them not getting as much engagement or viewership is in direct correlation to how much traffic they can drive to their own brands, which is massive,” Luke says. Engagement rates could, at the end of the day, impact sales.
But there, too, it seems the Kardashians actually have nothing to worry about. Begley’s Tribe Dynamics coined the metric EMV, or Earned Media Value, which is used in influencer marketing to quantify the value of a piece of social media content. And according to this metric, says Begley, “the Kardashian-Jenner empire is on solid footing, on the whole.” According to Tribe Dynamics’ data, in the first half of 2022, Kylie Cosmetics has held steady at a $48.8 million EMV, a 4% improvement over the same period in 2021; that may not sound like much, but it has far outperformed the top 10 beauty brands’ year-over-year decrease of 19% on average. Meanwhile, Skims closed the first half of the year with $10.2 million EMV, marking 56% year-over-year growth, and the recent launch of the SKKN by Kim skin-care line also “proved wildly successful,” Begley says, “suggesting the Kardashians remain royalty in the online beauty world.” Ranked by EMV, SKKN by Kim was the number-one skin-care brand in the US for June, generating $15.3 million EMV across 2,100 posts from 606 creators.
The Kardashians’ relationship with Instagram also goes deeper than most celebs’: It’s not simply one of many social media apps for them—it’s the platform that helped launch them to megastardom. And they, likewise, gave Instagram a major boost. Luke Lintz warns, however, that just because the family was integral in the platform’s rise doesn’t mean the reality stars actually wield any power over the company. Many fans compared the family’s sharing of the “Make Instagram Instagram Again” post to the time in 2018 when Kylie tweeted negatively about Snapchat and lost the company $1.3 billion in market value. But Luke says that while the remark may have temporarily plummeted Snapchat’s stock, it didn’t actually touch the platform’s viewership or user base. “It just affected it from an investor’s standpoint in terms of them seeing this massive celebrity drop a very negative comment about them,” he says. And Meta, the parent company of both Instagram and Facebook, “is in a whole different league than where Snapchat was at that point. There’s no way a callout like that could affect their investor base a significant amount.”
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Similarly, Begley points out that celebrities actually have surprisingly little sway over the platform, as they’re not anywhere near the most influential people using it. “Instagram’s celebrities may reach large audiences, but our research has found that smaller-scale influencers inspire the highest engagement rates, suggesting the platform’s users are more invested in content from up-and-coming creators than superstars,” he explains. “Nano-influencers [creators with under 10,000 followers on their primary social channel] saw an average engagement rate of 3.27% for Instagram Reels content and 2.65% for in-feed posts, with these figures steadily dropping across both channels as their audience sizes increased. Because smaller-scale creators boast much more engaged audiences than mega-influencers, it’s unlikely that the loss of celebrities would pose a substantial threat to Instagram’s relevance.” And vice versa—a loss of the platform wouldn’t be a game-ender for the Kardashians either. He added, “While a significant loss of engagement on Instagram, the Kardashians’ go-to channel, would pose a challenge for the family, blockbuster brands like Kylie Cosmetics, Skims, and SKKN by Kim could weather this turbulence by doubling down on partnerships with creators on other platforms like TikTok.”
But according to Luke Lintz, it’s also time the reality-TV family starts thinking well beyond the confines and flighty tech updates of the social media app that helped create them. “They have such a cult following and they’re so massive that if Instagram was deleted tomorrow, they could go on to another social media platform, and they would dominate. I think Instagram should not take it lightly that they’re committed to Instagram because of their generation.” Begley concurs, highlighting the already enormous effect on their brands of TikTok, a medium the Kardashian businesses have only just begun to tap into. “SKKN by Kim’s launch prompted a wave of TikTok product reviews, and Kylie Cosmetics has placed a greater focus on the platform over the past year,” he says. In the first half of this year, TikTok was responsible for pulling $4.7 million EMV for the brand, a 127% year-over-year increase, but also just a tiny fraction of the $41.4 million EMV that Instagram is responsible for.
Jordan Lintz, however, sees the next logical phase of the Kardashian empire’s growth not as simply pivoting to a new social media platform, but as actually bringing it all in-house. He explains that with more and more people embracing the idea of decentralizing important institutions like financial systems, it only makes sense social media would follow suit, “where you’ll own your own content and you’ll post on a blockchain where you actually own that piece of content.”
“Instagram owns your profile right now,” Jordan says. “Kim K rents her profile; she doesn’t own it.” This, in part, might explain celebrities’ sudden interest in pivoting to platforms like OnlyFans where, for the first time, they have almost total dominion over what they post and who gets to see it, while also receiving direct compensation from fans for that exclusive content. And for a family that has already vertically integrated both their own direct-to-consumer companies and their own fame, it seems a no-brainer that they would want to extend that level of control and monetization to their social media presence as well. Luke concludes, “At their caliber, with how much viewership, how much following they naturally have that isn’t platform specific to Instagram, it only makes sense for the future.”
