Instagram plans to enhance the platform’s “Search” feature to compete with TikTok.
Instagram Head Adam Mosseri on Tuesday, April 8, 2025, announced that the company is planning to make some major update to the app.
The remarks, made on a recent episode of the Build Your Tribe podcast, come at a time when younger Gen Z users often turn to social apps like TikTok for answers, instead of using traditional search engines.
“We’re … starting to invest more in search on Instagram because there’s so much amazing content,” Mosseri said. “And quite frankly, what we call content search — as opposed to searching for an account, actually searching for some type of content — it’s not very good on Instagram.”
The executive noted that part of the problem was that the team working on Instagram search has been small, but Meta recently “strengthened” that team with the goal of rolling out more improvements on this front over the months and years ahead.
Instagram head claimed the way that Gen Z and younger users search for content is something that’s been in flux for some time.
“It’s a long road, but I do think that could also be a good one for people who are looking for things. You can imagine, whatever you use Instagram for, it’d be great to be able to find ‘that’ more easily,” Mosseri added.
He continued, “But also, for creators … it should allow content to resurface so that you don’t get all the value in those first 24 or 48 hours.”
Mosseri’s comments suggest that Meta knows the next frontier where Instagram required to compete is as a search engine, not just a social network for keeping up with friends.
Despite this, Instagram aims to compete with TikTok on search is the recommended searches that appear at the top of the comments section.
Meanwhile, on TikTok, the suggested search is extracted from what people are talking about in the comments.
Mosseri noted that the version of Instagram’s app that looks more toward the comments to enhance search suggestions is coming out “soon.”
