What is Reels?
Reels is a short-form video feature offered by Facebook and Instagram, the online social networking services owned by Meta Platforms. The material tracks its scale and revenue trajectory, including comparisons to streaming incumbents and discussion of how its recommendation assumptions were refined after earlier video efforts.
Release history
- May 2026 - Jan Van Eck said Reels has surpassed Netflix, generating more revenue than all of Netflix.
- May 2026 - Michael Batnick said Reels is doing more revenue than Netflix.
- Aug 2026 - Ian Silber said he worked on IGTV, which he called a huge flop, and that Reels followed, with the team having baked in wrong assumptions and held onto constraints before learning and changing course quickly.
- Sep 2026 - An analysis of roughly 2,000 Reels and TikTok videos on dating sentiment found about 40% were positive dating content, amid discussion of heteropessimism.
In the discourse
Attributed discussion of Reels.
Instagram's Reels was a direct redo of the failed IGTV, not a TikTok clone. Success came from identifying and discarding wrong assumptions baked into IGTV, not from building a new product.
“I worked on IGTV which was like a huge flop and then we shipped reals and reals was like we and I mean that's a good example cuz like we had we just like kind of baked in some wrong assumptions and we held on to a few constraints but then we learned from that quickly and we were like okay actually let's change that and then we sort of redid it and then it became a really successful product.”Ian Silber · 16 Aug 2026
Instagram Reels alone generates more revenue than all of Netflix, according to Jan Van Eck.
“Reals has now surpassed Netflix. All of Netflix, just Reals does more revenue than Netflix.”Jan Van Eck · 22 May 2026
Analysis of roughly 2,000 dating videos on Reels and TikTok found positive dating content is the largest sentiment category at about 40%, cutting against the heteropessimism narrative.
“Heteropesimism as well. which is this idea that like straight relationships are kind of doom from the woman's perspective and taking a look at cont content on reals and Tik Tok trying to analyze the sentiment across you know about 2,000 videos people are mostly doing positive dating content about 40%.”<UNKNOWN> · 15 Sep 2026
Meta's Reels is reportedly generating more revenue than Netflix.
“Reels is doing more revenue than Netflix.”Michael Batnick · 27 May 2026