Head of Instagram to relocate to London
Boss of the Meta-owned platform will be based in King’s Cross as company competes with Tiktok
THE head of Instagram is moving to London, as the photo sharing app battles to stop an exodus of users to Chinese rival Tiktok.
Adam Mosseri will set up his new base in the King’s Cross offices of Instagram’s parent company Meta later this year. He will take personal charge of efforts to keep power users of the app happy. Mr Mosseri will work with Instagram’s London creator monetisation team, which develops tools that help influencers and celebrities make money from their large followings.
A spokesman for Meta said: “Given the global nature of his role, Adam will be temporarily based out of London later this year.
“London is already Meta’s largest engineering hub outside of the US, with over 4,000 employees across our offices, including a dedicated Instagram product team with people focused on building long term solutions for creators.”
Mr Mosseri’s planned relocation comes amid fierce competition between Instagram and the video sharing app Tiktok to win over audiences. Tiktok, which launched in 2016, has grown rapidly in recent years and has become hugely popular with Gen Z users. Despite being just six years old, a recent survey found Tiktok is now beating the BBC as a primary source of news videos for teenagers.
Instagram recently revamped its app to include more auto-playing videos in an effort to compete with its Chineseowned rival but the changes prompted a backlash from some of its most influential users.
Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner, her half-sister, both urged Instagram to “stop trying to be Tiktok”.
The pair own two of the top ten most followed accounts on Instagram, with more than 600m followers between them. Meta last week said it would reverse some of the amendments to Instagram following the widespread backlash.
Efforts to compete with Tiktok come as momentum at Instagram’s parent company stalls. Meta, which also owns Facebook and Whatsapp, posted its first ever fall in revenues last week amid weakening demand from advertisers.
Instagram remains bigger than Tiktok. Meta does not break down Instagram’s revenues separately from Whatsapp, Facebook and Facebook Messenger but the combined apps made $115bn (£94bn) in sales last year. Tiktok, by comparison, booked $4.2bn in sales during 2021.
The Chinese app has about a billion active users per month, just half of Instagram’s user base, yet Tiktok is growing at a much faster rate, having added 400m users between 2020 and 2021. Instagram took three years to grow from one billion to two billion users.
Tiktok has around 1,300 employees in London, its biggest office in Europe.
The majority of Instagram’s engineers are based in San Francisco and New York. Mr Mosseri’s relocation is understood to not be affecting the app’s headquarters or employee bases.
Mr Mosseri joined Facebook in 2008 and led the team who built Facebook’s central News Feed algorithms.
He moved to run Instagram in 2018 after its original founders quit. He has worked from locations including Los Angeles, Hawaii and Cape Cod in the past as part of a wider strategy for its executives to work remotely from around the world.