Instagram is shifting from reverse chronology to an algorithm-based feed, prioritizing relevant posts. People fear their content will be missed, but the change only reorders posts without removing them. Users will adapt to this change as they did with Facebook and Twitter.
Earlier this month, Instagram announced that they were going to follow in the footsteps of Facebook’s News Feed — by using an algorithm to organize users’ feeds by relevance instead of reverse chronology. Instagram has applied a reverse chronological order to their posts since the app debuted in 2010.
Instagram stated in their blog that most people, on average, miss about 70% of their feeds. With the new algorithm, the order of the posts would be changed — with the posts that you might care about the most (based on your relationship with the person posting and the post’s timestamp) appearing first in your feed. Facebook had been applying this algorithm since 2009, and more recently, Twitter has introduced their own version in the last month.
Like always, people were in a frenzy and uproar about this news. People don’t usually have open arms to change. Admittedly, I was pretty upset at first, but I’ve learned to accept the fact that things will be different, but not that different.
Yesterday (due to false rumors of Instagram rolling out this algorithm broadly), I was bombarded by a sea of posts asking to turn on post notifications for accounts that I follow, in fear that their posts would not be seen amongst their followers. Posts like these were popping up everywhere:
Turning on notifications for accounts would send a push notification and alert to user each time an account creates a post. And honestly, what do we hate most on our phones? Notifications. You’re asking for too much, people.
Okay, I get it — you have a following. Okay, I get it — Instagram influencers make money off of their view count. Okay — I get it, you don’t want your posts to go “missing.”
However, if you really read through the Instagram blog, you shouldn’t be too concerned. You’re still going to see the same content. No posts will be removed. Instagram is just reordering them. You got used to it on Facebook. You got used to it on Twitter (well, some of you). You’re going to get used to it on Instagram.
So please. Stop asking people to turn on notifications – it’s not doing you or your followers a favor. Stop asking people to like your photo just so that your photo will “show up in your feed.” If people like your content, then it will show up in your followers’ feeds.
Everything will be okay.
