Welcome back. I’m still trying to wrap my head around Glossier coming to Sephora. This feels like when Juicy Couture started selling at Kohl’s.

–Hannah Doyle

Instagram sucks right now. But depending on who you ask—Kylie Jenner, Chrissy Teigen, Nadeshot, or head of Instagram Adam Mosseri—you’ll get a different answer to the most important question: Why?

How we got here: Since 2016, Instagram has been the little sister of social apps, shamelessly stealing other platforms' style and passing it off as their own. Instances include (but are not limited to):

Typically after rolling out new features, Instagram has tweaked its algorithm to reward creators who use them.

Creators adapted: They learned how to create Stories when the algorithm suppressed their timeline posts. They made Reels when Instagram incentivized and amplified them.

But eventually, the number of hoops creators had to jump through to stay relevant led to exasperation and frustration (with diminishing returns). Last week, Instagram announced plans to make all videos Reels and change to a full-screen feed, further inching towards a complete TikTok imitation. This was essentially the last straw.

Which brings us to today—celebs and creators, spurred on by a viral petition, are pushing back. Mosseri responded by justifying the changes: “I need to be honest. I do believe that more and more of Instagram is going to become video over time,” Mosseri said. “So we’re going to have to lean into that shift.”

Mosseri’s “thanks, but no thanks” inspired even more criticism—which finally worked. As of yesterday, Instagram walked back some of the proposed changes.

In a world in which platforms flip-flop on algorithmic changes that can completely alter creators’ strategies, the best defense is a strong community—and having a presence on multiple platforms so your audience can easily find you elsewhere.

Ask anyone who dressed up as Joe Exotic last Halloween—some relics from 2020 just don’t hit the same anymore. Demi Skipper, creator of the TradeMeProject TikTok account, hopes to be the exception to that rule.

She went viral in 2020, surging to almost 5 million followers as she documented her experience trading a bobby pin for increasingly valuable items until she got a house. Now she’s restarted the project, with the goal to be the first person to accomplish the feat twice.

Relatively speaking, Demi’s TradeMe 2.0 is clocking great numbers: 11 trades in, she’s averaged 1.4 million views per video. But compared to Demi’s first go-round, during which her videos averaged 5 million views, the challenge in front of her is formidable.

Creators who go viral have a tough question to answer in order to capitalize on their 15 minutes—what next? In Demi’s case, maybe she could put a new spin on the trade-ups to differentiate them from her earlier work and up the stakes. But regardless, content with a specific start and end date (like Demi’s or even Ryan Trahan’s) creates complexity in ensuring lighting strikes twice. What would you do?

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TikTok launches so many music careers these days (Hello VMA nominees Lil Nas X and GAYLE), it’s hard to imagine the next big thing coming from anywhere but the app.

Enter: Evangeline. The TikTok-less indie artist posted a music video to her 3,000 YouTube subscribers last week that surpassed 1 million views in seven days…with no paid marketing.

It’s an impressive feat but so far, viral-on-YouTube hasn’t meant viral-on-Spotify. Evangeline’s song, Will, has tallied about 4,000 streams so far. For reference, some TikTok hits have led to as many as 500,000 daily Spotify streams almost immediately.

Evangeline’s experience illustrates that YouTube remains important for musicians—it’s where they can prioritize retention and community, as opposed to TikTok’s distribution power.

*This is sponsored advertising content.