Instagram announces plans to make big changes to user feeds. The photo and video sharing platform wants users to see the moments they care about first.
As Instagram grows and its 400 million monthly users post more content, users may end up missing to 70 percent of the content posted to their feeds, explains Instagram on its official blog. Hoping to improve the Instagram experience and ensure that users see more of what is posted, Instagram will soon order the moments based on what users "care about the most".
Instead of seeing images and videos listed in chronological order, Instagram will being to order them based on the "likelihood" that the user will be interested in that piece of content, as well as their relationship with the poster. Instagram will use an algorithm to determine this information.
However, some Instagram users are unhappy with the proposed changes, according to a report by The New York Times. One Instagram user, Vickie Mulkerin, tells the publication that "I want to judge what's important, not have some algorithm tell me what it thinks is important" and that "I like how I can open the app and see what my stepsister Ashley is doing today with my niece and nephew, right in that very moment".
Other social media companies have faced backlash for their attempts at shaking up the chronological order of their content feeds, including Instagram's parent company Facebook. Twitter users also spoke out against Twitter's plans to change its chronological timeline structure.
Those against Instagram's algorithm plans have nothing to fear for now, however, as the social media platform has no plans to change over night and will instead use tests before making the new feed permanent. Instagram states that "we're going to take time to get this right and listen to your feedback along the way" and that the experience will be rolled out over several months.
This time should allow the company to tweak that algorithm and ensure that it really does highlight important moments. It should also give users a chance to become accustomed to the new feed, preventing them from being overwhelmed by any immediate changes.
Instagram is steadily growing, watch a video detailing the social media platform's statistics below.