Social media is evolving quite evidently; firstly Google is concerned about a possible takeover by TikTok and Instagram. According to internal Google findings cited by TechCrunch, roughly 40% of people aged 16 to 25 preferred searching on Instagram over Google search and maps.
Over the past several years, TikTok has been the fastest growing social media app and it has experienced a meteoric rise in popularity. In order to keep up with its competitor Instagram, Snapchat also launched similar video features called Reels and Spotlight. Even YouTube seems like it wants to be more than a video streaming platform. As per one TechCrunch report, YouTube has announced the launch of new shopping options for users and video creators. Also, YouTube has partnered with Shopify to enable Youtubers and retailers to showcase their products and merchandise on their respective channels.
Similarly, TechCrunch also reported on Instagram’s most recent addition. Mark Zuckerberg the CEO of Meta is launching a new searchable map feature on Instagram. Users now will be able to browse popularly tagged venues nearby and filter out results by choosing certain categories such as restaurants, cafes and beauty salons using the enhanced map experience. These are some of the reasons why Google is concerned and needs to catch up with the ever growing social media platform Instagram.
Meanwhile Google is trying to cooperate with Instagram and TikTok to catalog and index videos and images from these apps. If this deal happens, Google will once again be the leading search in the market. Google has also been working on new forms of search, search using google lens visually and to use the multi search feature to query the search engine. Furthermore, few weeks back commissioner of the federal communications commission (FCC) wrote a letter to Apple and Google asking them not to keep TikTok on their app stores. The reason given in the letter was that TikTok is being used as an extensive surveillance tool by Chinese authorities.