Photo-sharing app Instagram has made major changes to how it’s users will view content moving forward. According to Instagram, the problem is that users aren’t seeing 70% of their followers posts. To fix this, they’ve decided to base the order of their users’ feed on a complicated algorithm determined by who they follow, how many likes certain pictures receive, and more.
Per Instagram: “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,” adding that to begin with, “all the posts will still be there, just in a different order.”
Instagram is following a familiar path that Facebook and Twitter have taken in the past. Those sites chose to display posts based upon an algorithm, and upset a huge portion of their audience.
What’s beautiful about Facebook, Twitter and (especially) Instagram is how simple they are for users. So even making the slightest of change causes major anxiety with the site and forces some users to swear off using the app all together.
Why do companies do this?
Well, the reality is tech companies have billions of dollars invested in them, and the only thing they’re worried about is their investors’s financial success. For various reasons, changing the app opens up new revenue streams, but it comes at the risk of alienating an audience who appreciates the familiarity of their product. More importantly, it’s also dangerous from a branding perspective. Bad press is quick to follow when these changes aren’t a hit with users.
Well, the reality is tech companies have billions of dollars invested in them, and the only thing they’re worried about is their investors’s financial success. For various reasons, changing the app opens up new revenue streams, but it comes at the risk of alienating an audience who appreciates the familiarity of their product. More importantly, it’s also dangerous from a branding perspective. Bad press is quick to follow when these changes aren’t a hit with users.
The best example of this is Twitter. Over the last couple of years, Twitter has mixed things up to create a higher valuation, only to garner incredibly negative feedback. They implemented roughly the same changes Instagram did, and they were labeled by the media as money hungry and out of touch. The company still hasn’t been able to shake that stigma, leaving genuine concerns as to whether they’ll meet growth projections. Expectations are usually unrealistically high in the first place, so it’s not surprising that companies don’t do whatever it takes to meet them.
Instagram is saying they’re doing this in the name of the user experience in the name of optics. But will the backlash of changing one of the most popular social media apps be enough to make Instagram revert back to how it was? Will they come off as desperate? These things remain to be seen, but Instagram changing even slightly is undeniable risky.
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