Instagram’s New Update On The Way!

Mar 16, 2016

Hi all,

Link: http://blog.instagram.com/post/141107034797/160315-news

Instagram announced yesterday that they are testing a new update to their platform. Instead of posts appearing in a chronological order on the feed, it will now be in an order that reflects your interest and the people you interact most closely with. This means that posts that you might be interested in, or posts from closer friends, will be at the top of your feed. This will be similar to the Facebook’s feed style.

The rationale for doing this, according to Instagram, is because “people miss on average 70 percent of their feeds. As Instagram has grown, it’s become harder to keep up with all the photos and videos people share. This means you often don’t see the posts you might care about the most.”

I believe that this new update will impact the way companies utilize Instagram the most. I foresee more Ads coming up on Instagram as companies can now utilize Instagram to reach out to potential consumers by getting their Ads right at the top of their feeds, a similar way to Facebook. This will definitely affect regular daily Instagram users when more Ads can be seen on this platform. Sounds pretty annoying to me!

What do you guys think? 🙂

P.s. Hang in there for the last few weeks of school!

Regards,

Cari Tan

G1

2 responses to “Instagram’s New Update On The Way!”

Chiang Li Ling Clara

March 19, 2016 at 10:53 pm

Hi Cari! Thanks for sharing!
I can see how this new algorithm might affect my user experience. Although Instagram has reassured users that they can look forward to a more personalised feed, responses have been mostly negative, with majority claiming that by doing so, Instagram is “screwing” up their feed. It seems that Instagram’s new algorithm could also signal the death of organic social content. With this new algorithm, it would definitely ‘irritate’ users (me included) when they have to see paid advertising content by certain brands on their feed. It might mean that the “popular posts” we see are paid posts by advertisers and brands hoping to secure prime positions on our Instagram feed. It just goes against the nature of Instagram and what it is known for – people love using Instagram because of the organic nature of content sharing!
– Clara (G1)

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1. KyuJin SHIM
  
  March 23, 2016 at 8:10 am
  
  Thanks you so much for bring up valuable insights regarding news feed and screening issue!
  
  I think this Instagram measure is to screen out unnecessary and unrelated content in the midst of a flood of content on social media. It is similar to my generation’s being spam-bombarded. To obtain relief from that, many people decided to exodus to new platforms (e.g., Yahoo, Hotmail to Google). I do think that for consumers it would be fairer if Instagram devised/provided an effective filtering app (emphasis on the word effective) to rule out spams in your news feed. Otherwise, people eventually might consider an exodus to someplace else to free themselves of spam and/or to avoid privacy infringement.
  I think this is emerging with the advent of ad-free sites such as “ello” https://ello.co/explore
  No, I am not saying that “ello” would be successful in the market anytime soon. But I am saying that the demand for an “ad-free” environment exists. Maybe we will see/maybe we will not see … some media platform wanting to incorporate that element into its core value of business, and it might succeed if it i) aligns well with user needs and ii) has an astute business model.
  
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