is Instagram running scared ?

Instagram is now facing the biggest challenge of its short existence. Now that it has succeeded in becoming a top mobile destination and successfully sold itself for a large amount of capital, it needs to perform two things well: One, remain relevant and second, get the next 100 million users. No easy task.

Where Next ?

 Instagram, like all rapidly successful internet company before, has to continue to remain relevant to a fast evolving, unfaithful, non-emotional audience. Teenagers and young adults who have made the platform a number one destination are growing up and the next generation craves novelty as much as it avoids “older” fads. The internet dead pool is full of previously massively popular platforms who have died a brutal, humiliating death for lack of relevancy.

Second, Instagram needs to continue growing. As hard as getting the first 100 million users can be, getting the next 100 million is even harder. Already used in majority outside the USA ( 65%), it can’t rely too much on exploding on international markets. While it has the advantage of being attached to the biggest social network in the world ( Facebook has over 1 Billion users), it is certainly no guarantee that it can migrate some new users. If it fails to grow, and grow massively, it will suffer the Myspace effect of deflection by anticipation. Users do not want to be associated with a platform that seems to be static in growth. Its popular or it’s not. There are no middle grounds.

The smell of fear

Instead, Instagram’s founders’ seemed more preoccupied by the quality of its advertising or length of time spent, hoping to manage its current user base by delivering unobtrusive  high-quality content. On advertising, the thinking is that they might trigger discontent and start losing users if they open wide the advertising channels with no regards to quality and volume. By filtering, they can also continue to charge a premium. But founders vetting each and every ad is not scalable and will not last for long if the company does not want to alienate Madison Avenue. There will be a time soon when the automated switch will have to be turned on and the hordes released. There is nothing wrong in being careful – and Instagram certainly has the cash to afford it – but too little too late can spell disaster in the fast eve loving online advertising space. Someone else could suck in those budgets.

The photo sharing platform recent features evolution also shows signs of fear. Instead of innovating, it has protected itself by copying what it felt was threats from competing platforms. Videos to follow Vine, Direct photo messaging to respond to Snapchat, adjustable filters to stay relevant to most photo editing apps, but nothing original. It wouldn’t be surprise to see them release a story-telling format that would counter Snapchat successful Stories. In terms of growth, that is not a winning strategy. It will need to do much more than deliver quality advertising if it wants to stay as popular as it is today, even take risks.

Innovate or die

For now, Instagram can continue to enjoy its highly dominant position but fear is not a good management advisor . The company has to return to its start-up roots and not hesitate to go fast and break something, as someone in their close environment famously said. It has to stop managing success as if it is permanent and start managing growth aggressively. They should be the company to imitate and steal ideas from, the one that engages its current users, as well as new ones, to adopt new habits and social reflexes. In other words, they should clearly think about where they will be in five year instead of worrying about the next quarter.

 

Photo by Colin Wu