Instagram has been making some big changes and a lot of people aren’t very happy about it. They’ve changed their model. Sponsored posts, formula based arrangement of posts, and more. Will this have users flocking away from it? We think so. Photo and video sharing apps are a dime a dozen right now; if people aren’t getting what they want from a social network or app –they are moving on.
So, what’s going on with Instagram? Well, for one, there are much more sponsored posts than before. This is a nuisance to users who don’t want to be sold to. Just like any site you visit with a bunch of ads, most people lose patience and move on to a different site or article that they don’t have to fish through ads to find their content. Same idea here. People go to Instagram to check out the people they are following, not to scroll through sponsored post after sponsored post.
They’ve also changed their feed model from the previous chronological list of photos posted by those you follow to a Facebook-style curation algorithm. This is based on your interaction. They’re going to show you posts from people you would like to interact with (like Facebook) instead of a chronological feed of all the photos of people you follow.
A similar algorithm is used by Facebook to pick and choose what it thinks you want to see. It prioritizes those posts and the others. Good idea in theory, but an algorithm isn’t a person. There have been countless times that I go searching for a friend I haven’t seen anything from in awhile just to find that they’ve been posting every single day and not a thing has shown up in my feed. You really lose the connection.
We’ve already seen millenials especially searching for other types of social networks and apps that don’t include Facebook for these same reasons. They don’t want constant ads and they want to see what they want to see. Now that Instagram has followed this model –it could spell the end.
What are your thoughts on the new algorithm and more frequent sponsored ads? Do you think that the generation that started Instagram will be running from it next? What do you think the solution is for marketers and users alike? Comment below!
