THE EMPIRE
Instagram is here to screw with your feed. Very soon, you won’t see posts in chronological order. Instead, the feed will serve you “top stories” first, in a similar post-ranking style used by the Facebook news feed. This change will be non-optional.
It’s unclear, however, what the company really means by top posts. In a statement released today, Instagram reassured users that the posts will be those they “care about most”, implying that the update will personalise user experience. The new algorithm will determine which posts you are likely to be interested in/engage with and push them to the top of your feed. They justify this change by backing it with the statistic that users miss out on 70 percent of the posts in their feed, and promise to make sure the 30 percent you see is relevant to you. But will it?
This update mirrors Instagram’s parent company Facebook’s current news feed, which is dominated by sponsored content that users arguably DGAF about. If Instagram is moving towards this model, it could mean that “popularity” of posts is something that could be sold to advertisers, and the most-liked posts of brands and media organisations will take prime position on your feed. It could also result in poorly performing posts being filtered out altogether, meaning that your friends might never see that club bathroom you were in the other night. Devo.
We’re jumping to all kinda conclusions here, but, if nothing else, this algorithm-based feed means your posts are going to have to compete to appear in your friends’ feeds. The update will commence testing over the coming months.
In other words, RIP Instagram.
Via The Verge
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