Seems like Instagram is not afraid of the same backlash Twitter recently faced when stories of changes to their timeline post prioritization began to circulate. In the most recent entry of the company’s blog, Instagram revealed plans to shift the timeline away from the current chronological order to a more Facebook-like, algorithmic-based stream.
“You may be surprised to learn that 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. To improve your experience, your feed will soon be ordered to show the moments we believe you will care about the most.” -Instagram
Depending on who you ask the move is either a welcome way to clean up cluttered feeds, or an unwelcome revision that breaks the intended functionality of Instagram. Twitter ran into this problem because it is seen as a living, current-event peek into the world. Millions use it to live-tweet about shows, sports, politics and news-worthy developments across the globe. The question is if Instagram has a similar sense of urgency and real-time relevance to its users, or if you can scroll a bit farther to see your friend’s Lo-Fi avocado toast, and latte.
Since Instagram is a Facebook company, most should have seen this change coming. Facebook switched to an algorithm-based timeline a long time ago. People were upset about it, but soon got over it as they apparently found more value in Facebook prioritizing what they need to see. It also allowed Facebook to run experiments on its users to test how people react to things shown to them on the biggest social network in the world.
“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.” -Instagram
There is no announced date for when the new timeline shift will take place but look for it in the next few months. If you are strictly against this, or at least want an opt-out option, now is the time to let Instagram know.
[button link=”http://blog.instagram.com/post/141107034797/160315-news” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Instagram[/button]
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