Meta’s campaign against TikTok will do little to hide its own issues: Negative stories about rivals won’t fix its longstanding advertising and content issues.

Communities, creators, and connection are the keys to success for brands looking to generate sales on TikTok in 2022.

Younger consumers turn to social media to inform their purchases: 45% of Gen Z shoppers use Instagram for product research, 1.5x more than look to Facebook and TikTok.

Read the latest stories on social media regulations from Insider Intelligence.

Instagram’s role in the metaverse will involve NFTs and the creator economy: At SXSW, Zuckerberg hinted at long-term metaverse plans and upcoming NFT features.

Everyone’s concerned about children’s privacy and safety on social media: As more consumers demand that social platforms be scrutinized, a case against TikTok’s handling of children's private data proceeds.

Twitter expands social commerce offerings to catch up with competitors: The social media platform won’t be a shopping destination anytime soon, but that won’t stop it from experimenting.

Jane Ko tried to avoid TikTok. The blogger and creator’s platform of choice is Instagram, where her @atasteofkoko account has about 118,000 followers, and she felt she wasn’t the right fit for an app that burst on the scene with singing and dancing—things she says she isn’t good at.

The “TikTok effect” on influencer marketing is palpable, but Instagram and YouTube are still highly relevant venues for creator video.

The metaverse may be far away, but video is here and now on social media—and consumer usage patterns are changing fast.

For many content creators, Instagram isn’t everything. In the US, 41.0% of creators run websites or blogs to reach their audiences outside of social media. Newsletters and podcasts are also tools they use to staying connected. But perhaps most notably, 43.3% do not use anything other than social platforms.

Ukraine conflict presents a chance for social media to amend a history of misinformation: American tech firms clashed with Russia over the weekend, often rebuking its requests.

Reddit gets its own AI content recommendation page: The new Discover tab will look a lot like Instagram’s Explore page, surfacing photos and videos from communities that users aren’t yet subscribed to.

TikTok and Instagram were once again the top US social networking apps of 2021, downloaded 94.0 million and 64.0 million times that year, respectively. Snapchat took third place with a 10% jump in downloads, leapfrogging Facebook, whose downloads fell by 11%.

Facebook Reels’ global rollout comes with fresh ad formats: The new banner and sticker ads both attract creators to the platform and offer marketers performance ad options for short-form video.

Among US social video viewers, YouTube is the top platform for watching short-form content, with 77.9% of those ages 16 and older going there to stream videos less than 10 minutes long. The No. 2 spot goes to Facebook, which captures a 60.8% share, while TikTok takes third with 53.9%.

TikTok was the No. 1 mobile app in the US last year, with 94.0 million downloads, a 6% increase over 2020. Runners-up Instagram and Snapchat reached 64.0 million downloads and 56.0 million downloads, respectively, meaning the three most downloaded apps in the US were all photo- and video-sharing platforms.

Meta’s earnings miss shows the vulnerability of its ad revenue model: The company could be in for a $10 billion hit from Apple’s privacy changes, and the rise of TikTok isn’t helping.

In Southeast Asia, total media ad spending snapped back to pre-pandemic levels in 2021 and will continue rising strongly this year. The growth in digital ad spending, though tamer in 2022, will again outpace that of the overall ad market.

TikTok takes up more of its users’ time than any other social media platform in the US. This year, adult TikTok users will spend an average of 38 minutes per day on the short-video app. Twitter ranks second, with a daily average of 35 minutes, while third-place Facebook will see 31 minutes per day from the average adult user.