Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Social media war for slice of teen market
OLIVIA logged on to the Facebook group, opened her video chat and waited for other people to sign on. Minutes later, pizza arrived – ordered by Instagram in California but delivered to Olivia’s door in Washington and to other video chatters around the country.
This was the “virtual pizza party” Instagram employees hosted for new members of Instagramowned private teen Facebook group IG Young Artists. The group, boasting more than 200 members, talks about everything from art and identity to social justice. And (duh!) they talk about Instagram.
“They talk with us directly,” Olivia said about the Instagram employees in the group. “People are intimidated by teens but when you talk to us directly, we’ll be direct with you.”
As Olivia described it, the private Facebook group isn’t composed of teen megausers or digital influencers or young Instagram stars. Instead, it’s filled with Instagram-loving teens with pretty typical follower counts and habits – just like herself.
As she chatted with other new group members online and ate pizza, Olivia said she realised the power of a group of teens en masse like this, spread across the country, connected by their obsession with Instagram. So, yeah, she’s not surprised the Facebook-owned social media network is wise to that power and wants a slice.
More and more social media companies are warring for teen attention and Instagram is making aggressive moves to win. Instagram Stories, the app’s latest update, allows users to doodle, filter and add photos to a live “story” – which is similar to Snapchat, the super-popular teen app, and its “Snapchat stories” feature. Like, really similar.
Instagram’s Stories may have swiped the good parts of Snapchat but it didn’t stop there. While Snapchat’s users love the app’s face filters and live stories, they’ve long asked for an easier way to find other users and to share snaps. Instagram, of course, has all of this built directly into its Stories function.
While the latest numbers don’t appear to suggest Snapchat is losing users to Instagram because of Stories, Instagram already has an audience almost twice as big as Snapchat’s – 300 million users to Snapchat’s 150 million. Olivia, of course, counts herself among them.
Part of the buzz around Instagram Stories and the ubiquity of Instagram in teen culture no doubt comes from the closeness with this target audience. As brands like Snapchat fight to retain precious teen attention with new face filters and media channels, groups like IG Young Artists show that Instagram is seeking it directly – from the actual teens using its app.
Olivia, a 17-year-old high school pupil, joined the group last year by invitation from an Instagram representative. Olivia met some Instagram employees at a Washington media event last year, and after chatting with the teens team about her interest in visual communication and social justice, she joined the Facebook group to share her feedback with other teens – and, most importantly, with other Instagram reps.
Berna Anat works with the teens and emerging trends teams at Instagram.
“We get feedback from our teen communities in a ton of different ways… The question I’m always asking is, ‘How can we make your life on Instagram easier? More fun? More creative?’ For Stories especially, we’re keeping a close eye on what different teen communities are asking for and how they align with our product.”
Olivia said teens in the group talk about just that – everything from tech issues (“There was one day when Instagram had crashed… Everyone was on the page, like, ‘Why is this happening?’ and they were, like, ‘We’re getting it fixed!’”) to poll questions (“If you were interested in finding more music, what platform do you use the most and for what reasons?”) to feedback on new features.
That feedback appears to go beyond what Instagram can glean simply from observing its users in action. Like many other Instagramobsessed teens in the group, Olivia is constantly using it. But that doesn’t mean she’s posting to the site herself as frequently as you’d think.
“I go on the app more than I actually post,” she said. “And I have to catch myself sometimes because I’m, like, ‘Why am I not posting?’”
Olivia hasn’t even posted an Instagram story on her own account yet.
“Right now, I’m defining a certain brand for myself, so when I start defining what I want my communication to be like with my followers or whatever, I’ll use Instagram Stories as a more public thing,” Olivia explained. But she was still watching them – and thinking about how it would change Instagram. And sharing those thoughts right back to the company.
She said the looking/ scrolling/not-posting becomes a habit, like it is for other teens. That’s a habit Instagram wants to learn more about – in the group and outside of it. – Washington Post