Remember when Twitter changed favoriting to “likes”? Or when Snapchat tweaked their font? Now Instagram is joining in on the fun and make an unnecessary update that will rile up their users!
Instagram announced on Monday that they will be switching their algorithm to display posts that you’re more inclined to double tap first, instead of the backwards chronological order they’ve been using since the app’s launch in 2012. In a post on their official blog, the company wrote that “people miss on average 70 percent of their feed. 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.”
TechCrunch explains that this means that “ if you don’t check your feed until the next morning but a friend whose photos you usually Like posted something awesome the night before, it could appear at the top of your feed even if it is hours old.”
People are calling out this feature’s similarity to Facebook’s home page, where posts are displayed based on popularity and the likeliness of engagement. Instagram, which Facebook bought in 2012 for $1 billion, is clearly making use of the same algorithm that will “show the moments we believe you will care about the most.” The announcement explained that “[t]he 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.”
But because nothing changes on the Internet without a big argument, Instagram is already expecting backlash from users. Although there’s no official roll-out date for this update, the company promised that they’re going to listen to user feedback and that “all the posts will still be there, just in a different order.”
