Instagram today is an endless sea of meaningless posts asking you to turn on post notifications for each account you follow. Brands and professional Instagrammers are worried that they are going to disappear from your Instagram feed once the company turns on its algorithmic feed.
We’ve been there before. When Vine or YouTube switched to an algorithmic feed, brands, YouTubers and Viners all wanted you to switch on notifications. The same happened when Facebook became more selective with Pages posts.
And yet, let’s be honest, this is getting ridiculous. People are posting things like this:
And this:
A photo posted by Vincenzo Langella (@draghetto86) on Mar 28, 2016 at 4:51am PDT
And this:
Are you exhausted? I sure am. But let’s try to sympathize with these users and understand what’s actually happening.
Like most feed-based networks, Instagram is starting to feel like a crowded place. People now follow hundreds of accounts and receive dozens of new photos per hour. Good posts are getting lost in the middle of not-so-good posts.
User experience suffers, people are less inclined to use Instagram. And that’s why Instagram has a solution. Soon (but not tomorrow), Instagram’s magical robots will put the best photos at the top of your feed. If posts don’t perform well, Instagram won’t show those posts to all followers.
Instagram might even show posts out of order. In other words, Instagram is going to become more like Facebook, and less like Twitter.
But brands and professionals should definitely freak out. Some community managers spent months of hard work increasing the number of followers they have on their Instagram accounts. And soon, only a fraction of this fanbase is going to receive Instagram posts. It’s true, algorithmic feeds force us to compete.
Even worse, Instagram doesn’t provide analytics tools (except video views). They won’t know how many people view their posts. Professionals won’t know if they’re doing a good job and what type of posts is performing well. If a brand’s reach decreases dramatically, some brands will also have to pay for ads like on Facebook. This isn’t a bad thing for Instagram, but brands don’t want to pay for something that they could do for free.
In short, if you didn’t know why everyone is freaking out on Instagram today, now you know. Maybe Instagram will become more interesting after this change. And of course, there’s only one possible answer for all those whiny Instagrammers:
#instagram #instagramupdate #postnotifications
A photo posted by @_theletterg on Mar 28, 2016 at 7:37am PDT
Update: Instagram confirmed on Twitter that nothing is changing “right now”:
We’re listening and we assure you nothing is changing with your feed right now. We promise to let you know when changes roll out broadly.
— Instagram (@instagram) March 28, 2016
Featured Image: Jayphen/Flickr UNDER A CC BY 2.0 LICENSE (IMAGE HAS BEEN MODIFIED)