For non-Big Tech businesses, when you want to do proprietary market research about a product or service, you go through a process. You start with a testable hypothesis, then you design an experiment to test your idea(s). That’s followed by the selection of target personas, identification of the pool of potential research subjects, etc. For most of us, this is a well-established, time-consuming, resource-intensive process.
That’s not the case for Instagram.
Instagram is owned by Meta (the company formerly known as Facebook). Every day, hundreds of millions of users log on and endlessly scroll for hours, which means Instagram can do more market and product research before lunch than most of us can do in a month.
Is it possible that Instagram redesigned its main user interface and launched it broadly without thoroughly testing the design? That seems highly unlikely. Actually, I can’t imagine how that would even be possible. So, with a tested product and hundreds of spreadsheet tabs describing how many users would be lost, how many would be mad, how many would be mildly annoyed, how many would be excited, delighted, etc… what possible excuse can Instagram have for walking back its answer to TikTok?
Are Kim and Kylie that powerful?
Author’s note: This is not a sponsored post. I am the author of this article and it expresses my own opinions. I am not, nor is my company, receiving compensation for it.