@kantrowitz: The app store's wild west is gone—and that's why AI hasn't had its Instagram moment yet. Mike Krieger built Instagram in an era when a pair of founders could ship a photo app and hit #1 in three months. The market was fragmented, attention was distributed, and distribution wasn't a moat. That world no longer exists. Today, the top 10 apps are fortified. TikTok and Instagram Reels have consolidated a massive percentage of time spent. A new consumer app—AI-powered or otherwise—doesn't face scattered competition anymore. It faces entrenched networks with billions of users and years of behavioral lock-in. This isn't a critique of AI itself. It's a structural observation: the conditions that allowed breakout consumer apps to exist have changed fundamentally. The difficulty isn't the technology. It's the landscape. Media: Big Technology AI Summit #MikeKrieger #Instagram #AI #ConsumerTech #AppStrategy

Alex Kantrowitz

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Sunday 21 June 2026 16:07:09 GMT