Meta's newly released video creation app, Instagram Edits, has achieved a bigger debut than its direct competitor, Bytedance's Capcut. Today, the new app that will help users create videos for Instagram reels, stories and other social posts has been downloaded estimated 702,900 times on iOS devices in the first two days on the market. According to data from App Intelligence Provider Appfigures, downloads of about 37 times the availability of Capcut are about 37 times the availability of Capcut.
As of Thursday, the edit had grown to 1.2 million iOS downloads and 5.9 million downloads on Android. In comparison, CapCut only downloaded 83.5k times in the first 3 days on iOS and Android. To be fair, Capcut was only available in half the global market at the time of its launch, but even if that number doubles or triples, the edits are far ahead.
In the US alone, edits were downloaded 381,000 times in the first three days, and Capcut was downloaded only 3,400 times during its US debut. In this more direct comparison, the US release of the editor was 112 times the size of Capcut.
The rapid adoption of editing also led to apps achieving high rankings during their debut, and Appfigures was found. These numbers show how powerful the meta networking effect is when it comes to launching new apps that benefit from the wider social networking ecosystem.
The new Instagram companion app hit number one on the charts in the US iPhone App Store, including top and top apps (negative games) on April 22nd.
The App Store now has higher editing than Capcut, as it tracks top apps with download count and speed of new installations. This was 14th and 10th overall for non-top apps in the US after their first three days in the market.
However, editing still has a long way to go to keep up with Capcut's overall user base. The Bitedo-owned app, popular with Tiktok Creators, was launched in April 2020, and since then, iOS and Android, excluding China, have been downloaded 1.22 billion times worldwide.
So far, editors have received mixed reactions from creators, social media marketing consultant Leah Haberman reported in a recent newsletter. Many praised the app's ease of use, built-in analytics, ad-free nature, support for 4K video, and watermarkless exports. Critics pointed out that the editing still lacks the features Capcut offers, including templates and many transitional effects.
Eventually, editing can still keep up with Capcut, but you can also add paid tiers and introduce advertising as a way to monetize.