As Meta battles waning popularity among young people, a shrinking user base, new Apple privacy options decimating its advertising business, and bad press, it’s been pushing videos in front of its users’ eyeballs. Reels are a fairly shameless TikTok knockoff that nobody seems to enjoy, but they have been a central focus of Mark Zuckerberg’s since they were introduced to Instagram in August 2020 and to Facebook in September 2021. Get in, kids, we’re pivoting to video again! Recode reports that on a recent earnings call, the CEO mentioned them at least twenty times and said it’s “definitely the right thing” to “not hold on the brakes at all” with Reels.
Recode’s Shirin Ghaffary then shares an exclusive analysis by the think tank, the Integrity Institute. According to the report, Reels account for more than half of the 20 most-viewed posts on Facebook in the U.S. last quarter — that’s a lot of high-performing videos. It’s unclear whether the high performance of Reels is a result of actually good, engaging content or Meta’s relentless push for videos on its sites.
