Where do you think Reels fits in Facebook's long term strategies? Why choose Instagram to launch Reels and not Facebook?

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Where do you think Reels fits in Facebook's long term strategies? Why choose Instagram to launch Reels and not Facebook?

Asked at Meta (Facebook) over a year ago

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nehagupta · Answer 1 · 2021-08-14T12:08:14+0000

Clarifications:

Reels is the newly released short 15-30 sec video media format on Instagram? Yes.
Long term strategy as in product strategy ? Yes
Long term as in 10 yrs? yes
When it is said not on 'facebook' then it means not on facebook social media platform ? yes

Description of products:

Facebook social media platform: it allows u to connect with friends/loved ones and shared interests that matter to you most. It allows variety of media types for expressing your selves like text, photos, videos, ephemeral stories. it also have products like groups, pages, events to connect and discuss on shared interests with other users who might not necessarily be your friends. Facebook is more of informational product which helps u to find out in detail about any interest (pages, groups), friend(from their profile page - likes, dislikes, where they are from, education, job etc), brands (what is the brand/company about, where is its office, images of the place, working hrs etc), places
1. Users:-
  1. Content creators
    1. 27% users are in 25 to 34 bracket.
    2. 35 to 44 hold next position with 21% share
    3. 45 to 51 - 16%
    4. 18 to 24 - 14.7%
    5. 13 to 17- 1.7%
  2. Content viewers
    1. 27% users are in 25 to 34 bracket.
    2. 35 to 44 hold next position with 21% share
    3. 45 to 51 - 16%
    4. 18 to 24 - 14.7%
    5. 13 to 17- 1.7%
Instagram: Instagram is the social media platform that allows users to capture and share their moments. It allows users to post content in rich formats like videos, photos, live videos with interesting AR effects and filters. Users can capture or uploading photos/videos from their desktop or mobile gallery. If they capture videos then it allows options to edit the video as well. This product is more about capturing a particular moment and not about details on any topic as such.
1. User base:
  1. Content creators
    1. Users between
      1. 60% base in 18-34 age bracket
      2. 13-17: 7%
      3. 35-44: 16%
      4. 45+ : 12%
    2. Brands/influensers
  2. Content viewers
    1. Users between 18 -34 yrs age
Facebook:
1. Strengths of Facebook:
  1. 2.6 billion monthly active users so a huge network of engaged users who use facebook for connecting with their loved ones, brands and shared interests.
2. Weakness:
  1. Facebook is becoming more and more popular with elder age group (as seen from the age gp distribution) and is less popular with younger audience which are rooting more towards more creative / informal fun platforms like Snapchat, tiktok, and to some extend Instagram but not Facebook platform.
    1. It does not provide options to engage with friends in a fun and creative manner which is also quick and efficient.
    2. Too many options like posts (variety of options - text, photos, videos, live, emoticons) , stories, messenger, posts, ads), watch, play/stream games so becomes overwhelming sometimes.
    3. Young audience feel they are being watched on FB since parents, grand parents also on the same platform.
  2. Dependence on Ads as their sole monetization engine.
3. Competition: Many competitive products like tik tok, snapchat coming up which offer fun engaging creative platform focused on youngsters to connect with others. Also they are focused on one age group.
Instagram
1. Strength:
  1. Young highly engaged audience
  2. It is visual/rich media focused platform, that allows options to express your self via images, video in a creative manner thus looks more attractive (not texty)
2. Weakness
  1. Monetization : only via ads
1. Competitors:
  1. Tick tok, snapchat, pin interest coming up which offer fun engaging creative platform focused on youngsters to connect with others. Also they are focused on one age group.
Thus I think reels, fit into Facebook strategy to :
1. Provide a creative engagement tool to young audience so that they don't leave the Facebook family of products and shift to competition. It is kind of a way to engage these audiences so as to keep Facebook platform relavent for the coming generations.
2. Also it is a parity feature to match competition like tik tok but also to pivot into the space of video entertainment where u have the likes of You tube so that in long run it can develop another revenue stream in terms of paid videos or paid streaming.
Reels could be part of Facebook social platform or Instagram. Would like to evaluate this based on below criteria:-
1. Target Base
  1. As discussed facebook social media platform as more of older audience in comparison to Instagram. Reels is a product suited to younger audience who is looking to express themselves in fun, creative manner and looking to find ways to discover themselves.
  2. When launching a new product we need to launch it where the target base is present so as to ensure that product is used by early adopters and can be iterated over based on feedback.
  3. If it launched in Facebook which already has small segment of Target base then the product might not catch attention and fail since users don't adopt it.
2. Alignment with product vision
  1. Facebook is about providing features to help users connect and build communities and bring world closer :-
    1. so it is more informational & detail where users express their opinion (in detail) for discussion with friends/loved ones or users with shared interests.
    2. For revisiting memories
    3. For finding information on your loved brands, stores
  2. Where as Instagram is more about moments which matches more with Reels kind of product
3. Canebalization
  1. Facebook already has Watch which is a video sharing product with the mission of being a destination that people can visit to find the videos that matter to them, the video creators they want to see, and other fans that they can connect with. It has both user generated and Facebook generated content and thus is more like Youtube.
  2. Launching Reels on Facebook might confuse the users as well as creators as both the platform will look bit similar and might eat into each others user base and might clutter the platform as well. Where Instagram is already a platform for videos and images and does not have a watch kind of product. It does have Instagram videos but those are not showcased separately as 'watch'. They are part of explore tab and feeds.
Thus based on above evaluation, I think Reels is more suited to Instagram then Facebook.