Instagram Introduces A New Feed
Taking a page out of parent company Facebook’s play book, Instagram announced earlier this week that they would begin experimenting with the platform’s algorithm. In a move that recalls the fall of 2009, when Facebook changed everything and digital marketers everywhere collectively lost their minds, Instagram is talking about clearing the clutter in your feed.
In a blog post, the company explains their plan by saying that “people miss on average 70 percent of their feeds” and that “The order of photos and videos in your feed will be based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting and the timeliness of the post. As we begin, we’re focusing on optimizing the order — all the posts will still be there, just in a different order.”
A Diluted Newsfeed
If you follow hundreds or even thousands of accounts on Instagram you likely know what they are talking about. With over 400 million active users on Instagram, its easy to create a feed full of fairly random stuff and then miss the posts from the accounts you really do care about. This is what Instagram is hoping to remedy. For their part, Instagram seems to understand that messing with feeds can be a potentially explosive experiment (see the #RIPTwitter hashtag that was retweeted over 1 million times when Twitter attempted a similar change) but in the company blog post they say “We’re going to take time to get this right and listen to your feedback along the way.”
Instagram Engagement Declining?
Some say that the move was inevitable and changes to the algorithm will make Instagram great again. After experiencing explosive growth over the past couple of years (27.6% of the US population is on Instagram) there are reports of a slumping engagement rate.
According to forecasting firm eMarketer, Instagram is expected to have mobile ad sales of $1.37 billion in the U.S. and $1.48 billion worldwide this year. If, like on Facebook, brands are seeing lower organic engagement, they may be tempted to purchase more ads. If, like on Facebook, the algorithm tends to favour larger brands, with larger followings small brands will have to start allocating a portion of their budget to Instagram ads in order to show up in they follower’s feeds.
Instagrams Future …
If you’re curious about how this algorithm will work, it is expected to operate under similar factors to the ones that Facebook gives weight to. What that means is, the more your followers double tap and comment the more weight your picture or video is given and thus the more people it is shown to. The changes will roll out slowly over the course of the next several months, giving us ample opportunity to start building engagement with our audiences now.
One thing is for sure: It will be interesting to see how things play out on this one don’t you think?
Thanks for reading!