<story><title>Evaluation of TikTok vs. Instagram Reels</title><url>https://www.surgehq.ai//blog/tiktok-vs-instagram-reels-personalized-human-evaluation</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>saurik</author><text>&amp;gt; 1. The Reels algorithm is simplistic as fuck. I was scrolling through Instagram recently and a three reel “ad” came up. I accidentally tapped on the center one and it turned out to be a pimple popping video. Now every reel I see is that. No exceptions. I am sure if I actually watched more Reels I would get better content but that’s work.&lt;p&gt;OMG this... a million times this :&amp;#x2F;. YouTube has similar issues--where you watch one video from some sitcom or cartoon not because it was from that particular show but because it happened to be about something interesting and suddenly YouTube is SURE you LOVE that show and want EVERYTHING IT HAS about that show--but it isn&amp;#x27;t quite so bad as Instagram, where I&amp;#x27;ve heard a ton of stories about ending up pigeonholed by its algorithm into something they have a phobia for or past trauma related to, and now they are afraid to use the app, because it really does feel like you click on one pimple popping video (which has come up as the SPECIFIC issue for MULTIPLE people I&amp;#x27;ve talked to, INCLUDING MYSELF a while ago) and BAM the app is now nothing but pimples being popped, 24&amp;#x2F;7.</text></item><item><author>IgorPartola</author><text>As a millennial I can tell you exactly why TikTok is better:&lt;p&gt;1. The Reels algorithm is simplistic as fuck. I was scrolling through Instagram recently and a three reel “ad” came up. I accidentally tapped on the center one and it turned out to be a pimple popping video. Now every reel I see is that. No exceptions. I am sure if I actually watched more Reels I would get better content but that’s work.&lt;p&gt;2. Reels are often poor quality. What I see is mostly life hacks that are actually really stupid or jokes that never pay off.&lt;p&gt;3. TikTok has a creator culture that seems far superior to Reels. What Facebook&amp;#x2F;Instagram seem to fail to realize is that the problem they have isn’t a lack of a video platform but rather a lack culture. TikTok somehow did foster a really cool culture of people creating content, perhaps using their stitches feature.&lt;p&gt;4. Instagram is a photo sharing platform. Imagine if every other thing you saw on TikTok was a still photo. It would be jarring. That’s the current experience with reels.&lt;p&gt;5. I don’t know if this is actually true but it feels to me that you can get a lot more exposure quickly on TikTok than with Reels. I don’t post TikTok videos but know enough people who do and it seems they are very much able to get tens of thousands of views with minimal effort and while being relatively new to the platform. I don’t think you can get those numbers with Reels.&lt;p&gt;6. TikTok nailed ads. They are obvious, easy to skip, and not jarring at all. Instagram is a mess.&lt;p&gt;7. I come to Instagram to seek specific kind of content from my friends. I get reels from total strangers. I come to TikTok to get lols from random strangers and sometimes see friends. This is very personal but this is a major reason for me to use both and to dislike Reels.</text></item><item><author>nemothekid</author><text>I like that they asked actual users, and provided actual examples; it&amp;#x27;s something I&amp;#x27;ve always felt off about Instagram&amp;#x27;s Reels vs TikTok. However the takeaway is that your TikTok feed is curated by hand by artisan robots vs Instagram is curated by lizards who only care about data.&lt;p&gt;Both companies are completely data driven with some amazing engineers; but &lt;i&gt;why&lt;/i&gt; is the Reels product boring, while TikTok is engaging has to be something other than TikTok pulled the  &amp;quot;wholesome&amp;quot; lever. (There was a ~month where I was getting incredibly depressing sideshows, so I don&amp;#x27;t think tiktok is 100% wholesome).&lt;p&gt;My theory has been that people have been conditioned out of posting to Instagram (if you don&amp;#x27;t have a literally perfect life, then why post) and as a result Instagram just has less content to draw upon. I think this effort to chase TikTok isn&amp;#x27;t going to pan out because &amp;quot;regular&amp;quot; people aren&amp;#x27;t posting to Instagram.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jillesvangurp</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s the dreaded &amp;quot;more of the same shit&amp;quot; algorithm that people confuse with deep learning and AI. The sad reality is that recommendation teams in these companies maintain some ugly gobbled together if .. else logic rather than a proper recommendation engine. Proper recommendation engines are hard. That&amp;#x27;s why recommendations change dramatically if you just use a vpn or travel. The IP address based geo location trumps everything else they might know about you. That&amp;#x27;s because there&amp;#x27;s a big if else around whatever other logic they have.&lt;p&gt;Add promoted content&amp;#x2F;ads to the mix that they are paid to promote and you end up with a mix of content that is primarily based on where you are, what they want to pimp in that region, and more of the same shit you were clicking on anyway; more or less in that order. The exact same shit quite often actually. Even filtering that out seems hard.&lt;p&gt;They are incentivized by ad clicks, not by your amusement. That&amp;#x27;s the business mistake that allows Tiktok to prosper because they are still trying to grow at the expense of their competition which means that they are in fact incentivized by your amusement as observed through your addictive behavior in the form of content clicks.&lt;p&gt;Instagram was like that once. And then Facebook bought them and started messing it up. Facebook was once like that until Facebook became an advertising company. The mistake that gets made over and over again in this space is that at some point they think they&amp;#x27;ve won and start milking their network for revenue. The process of doing that destroys and erodes that network and something else pops up that is more interesting for users.&lt;p&gt;Tik Tok is doomed to go there too. Just a matter of time. It&amp;#x27;s irresistible for shareholders and advertisers. They&amp;#x27;ll get dollar signs in their eyes and they&amp;#x27;ll mess it up.</text></comment>
<story><title>Evaluation of TikTok vs. Instagram Reels</title><url>https://www.surgehq.ai//blog/tiktok-vs-instagram-reels-personalized-human-evaluation</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>saurik</author><text>&amp;gt; 1. The Reels algorithm is simplistic as fuck. I was scrolling through Instagram recently and a three reel “ad” came up. I accidentally tapped on the center one and it turned out to be a pimple popping video. Now every reel I see is that. No exceptions. I am sure if I actually watched more Reels I would get better content but that’s work.&lt;p&gt;OMG this... a million times this :&amp;#x2F;. YouTube has similar issues--where you watch one video from some sitcom or cartoon not because it was from that particular show but because it happened to be about something interesting and suddenly YouTube is SURE you LOVE that show and want EVERYTHING IT HAS about that show--but it isn&amp;#x27;t quite so bad as Instagram, where I&amp;#x27;ve heard a ton of stories about ending up pigeonholed by its algorithm into something they have a phobia for or past trauma related to, and now they are afraid to use the app, because it really does feel like you click on one pimple popping video (which has come up as the SPECIFIC issue for MULTIPLE people I&amp;#x27;ve talked to, INCLUDING MYSELF a while ago) and BAM the app is now nothing but pimples being popped, 24&amp;#x2F;7.</text></item><item><author>IgorPartola</author><text>As a millennial I can tell you exactly why TikTok is better:&lt;p&gt;1. The Reels algorithm is simplistic as fuck. I was scrolling through Instagram recently and a three reel “ad” came up. I accidentally tapped on the center one and it turned out to be a pimple popping video. Now every reel I see is that. No exceptions. I am sure if I actually watched more Reels I would get better content but that’s work.&lt;p&gt;2. Reels are often poor quality. What I see is mostly life hacks that are actually really stupid or jokes that never pay off.&lt;p&gt;3. TikTok has a creator culture that seems far superior to Reels. What Facebook&amp;#x2F;Instagram seem to fail to realize is that the problem they have isn’t a lack of a video platform but rather a lack culture. TikTok somehow did foster a really cool culture of people creating content, perhaps using their stitches feature.&lt;p&gt;4. Instagram is a photo sharing platform. Imagine if every other thing you saw on TikTok was a still photo. It would be jarring. That’s the current experience with reels.&lt;p&gt;5. I don’t know if this is actually true but it feels to me that you can get a lot more exposure quickly on TikTok than with Reels. I don’t post TikTok videos but know enough people who do and it seems they are very much able to get tens of thousands of views with minimal effort and while being relatively new to the platform. I don’t think you can get those numbers with Reels.&lt;p&gt;6. TikTok nailed ads. They are obvious, easy to skip, and not jarring at all. Instagram is a mess.&lt;p&gt;7. I come to Instagram to seek specific kind of content from my friends. I get reels from total strangers. I come to TikTok to get lols from random strangers and sometimes see friends. This is very personal but this is a major reason for me to use both and to dislike Reels.</text></item><item><author>nemothekid</author><text>I like that they asked actual users, and provided actual examples; it&amp;#x27;s something I&amp;#x27;ve always felt off about Instagram&amp;#x27;s Reels vs TikTok. However the takeaway is that your TikTok feed is curated by hand by artisan robots vs Instagram is curated by lizards who only care about data.&lt;p&gt;Both companies are completely data driven with some amazing engineers; but &lt;i&gt;why&lt;/i&gt; is the Reels product boring, while TikTok is engaging has to be something other than TikTok pulled the  &amp;quot;wholesome&amp;quot; lever. (There was a ~month where I was getting incredibly depressing sideshows, so I don&amp;#x27;t think tiktok is 100% wholesome).&lt;p&gt;My theory has been that people have been conditioned out of posting to Instagram (if you don&amp;#x27;t have a literally perfect life, then why post) and as a result Instagram just has less content to draw upon. I think this effort to chase TikTok isn&amp;#x27;t going to pan out because &amp;quot;regular&amp;quot; people aren&amp;#x27;t posting to Instagram.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>oefrha</author><text>I’ve always wondered why they are so bad at learning such an obvious lesson from their supposed biggest threat. TikTok seems to always mix it up; even if you do actually want to watch pimple popping 24&amp;#x2F;7, they seem to throw in some totally unrelated thing once in a while. Turns out people easily find things they didn’t even know they would enjoy this way, and when they have many interests, their feeds are way more engaging.&lt;p&gt;What’s so hard about randomizing 10-20% of the time?</text></comment>