Instagram today announced that it's making changes to the Instagram feed algorithm to address concerns users have had with the feed for quite some time now.
Instagram originally used a chronological feed, showing the newest Instagram posts first when you opened up the app, but the company changed that in June of 2016 to display posts based on relevancy. The change caused days-old posts to be displayed in some situations, which users were unhappy with.
Starting today, Instagram is planning to focus more on surfacing newer posts, a change the company is making based on user feedback. It won't be the same as the original chronological feed, but Instagram says new posts will show up first.
Based on your feedback, we're also making changes to ensure that newer posts are more likely to appear first in feed. With these changes, your feed will feel more fresh, and you won't miss the moments you care about. So if your best friend shares a selfie from her vacation in Australia, it will be waiting for you when you wake up.
Instagram is also disabling the feature that causes the Instagram feed to automatically refresh. Instead, Instagram is testing a "New Posts" button that will let users decide when to refresh a feed.
Tap the button and you'll be taken to new posts at the top of feed -- don't tap, and you'll stay where you are. We hope this makes browsing Instagram much more enjoyable.
Instagram says additional feed improvements will be introduced over the course of the next few months.
Top Rated Comments
But yeah, the auto-refresh thing can go straight to hell and I'm glad it's gone.
Aside from cloning Snapchat features and becoming more clever about serving more and more ads - to the annoyance of most users and acclaim of advertisers - what the f has instagram done that’s worthwhile in the past few years?
But we are not the average user who just mindlessly laps up the gruel facebook and Instagram feed them without a second thought about how it’s ordered. It’s the unfortunate reality.
Another thing to always bear in mind is that we are not the customers, so why in the world would they do anything to suit our preferences unless it was absolutely unavoidable. We are the product, to be continually manipulated and to extract the maximum value from as it pertains to pleasing their actual customers- the advertisers.
As long as the user base keeps growing at a healthy pace (it is), then they have absolutely no incentive to appease the vocal minority.
Actually, it may make more sense for them to drive away the (usually early adopter) crowd who may sow the seeds of discontent in the broader base of sheeple who followed them into the black hole of attention. We served our initial purpose and now our complaints probably aren’t worth the annual $26 per user Facebook makes off of us, if we’re gonna complain about the meal in front of others.
It’s for these reasons and ones related to privacy that I stopped using facebook and later instagram, and simultaneously bought a ton of FB stock. They used me, so I might as well use them!