a little over a year ago Adam MosseriDirector of Instagram, in which he explained that the application was in the process of evolution and that it was no longer just an app to share photos, to focus on four major growth areas: creators, shopping, messaging… and video. «We are no longer an app to share photos», explained.
According to his words, we could expect an Instagram platform whose central axis is no longer images, but video content. According to Mosseri, this new facet would integrate new ways of interacting with videos, such as Full-screen, immersive, entertaining, mobile-first videos. With this Instagram seeks to strengthen its position as one of the most important, in a market that does not stop growing in competitiveness.
“The number one reason people use search on Instagram is to be entertained.” And in that search for entertainment, the leader of Instagram considers that video is the key element. As Mosseri puts it: “Let’s be honest, right now there is a very serious competition. it’s huge. YouTube is even bigger.” So it’s time for Instagram to get even bigger.
Since then, Instagram has effectively released three major updates:
- the new functions that had been launched on a trial basis in January this year have now been expanded globally by adding two different modes: the chronological feed and the special feed for favorites. According to Adam Mosseri the new feed is intended to “making Instagram the best possible experience and giving you new ways to quickly see what matters most to you”and this is an important step in that direction. The Home feed shows content curated by the app that might be interesting to each user, including those users who are not on our following list but have content we like. or we have searched in your app.
- mid june Instagram announced that it would start testing a new design for its feed already offer the content , with the aim of giving greater prominence to the videos and images in this section. Own Mark He was in charge of announcing the changes using his official Instagram account. The CEO of Meta shared a story in which showed how the new vertical full screen layout works. He stated during the presentation that “We want to make it easier to discover content and connect with friends.”
- Finally, just a few days ago the network announced that everybody videos with a duration of less than 15 minutes that are shared on the platform .
The fact is that none of these changes seems to have completely convinced platform users, who also perceive how advertising pressure on organic content has grown in recent months.
the kardashiangate
last weekend Kylie Jennershared in his stories (a feature “inspired” by another social network, Snapchat) a screenshot of another user’s post, in which he showed his longing for the old days of Instagram as a photo-sharing application. “Make Instagram be Instagram again. Stop trying to be TikTokI just want to see cool photos of my friends»
Shortly after, his sister kim kardashian also shared the same post, which soon racked up over a million likes. Let us remember that both sisters are among the , counting their followers by hundreds of millions.
And of course, faced with such convening power, Mr. Mosseri has been forced to intervene.
Adam Mosseri’s response
As on previous occasions, Mosseri has chosen the video format (the same format against which many users of his social network are rebelling) to try to calm the spirits of the mass enraged.
👋🏼 There’s a lot happening on Instagram right now.
I wanted to address a few things we’re working on to make Instagram a better experience.
Please let me know what you think 👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/x1If5qrCyS
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) July 26, 2022
In a tone halfway between tension and disbelief, the Instagram leader has contextualized the situation in which the platform finds itself:
“We are experimenting with a large number of changes to the app and have heard many signs of concern on your end, so let’s try to clarify a few things:
- If you’re viewing a new full-screen version of your feed, it’s a quiz. It’s a test for a small percentage of people, and the idea is that offering a full screen experience, not only for videos, but also for photos, will be a more fun experience for everyone. But I also want to be clear: it’s still not good, and we’ll have to improve it if we want to expand it to the rest of the Instagram community.
- The second thing I see a lot of concern about is photos and how we’re trending towards video. I want to be clear: we will continue to support photos. It’s part of our legacy (…) That said, I have to be honest: I think Instagram will become more and more about video. We see this even if we don’t change anything. Even if you see your chronological feed. If you see what people share on Instagram, it’s turning more and more towards videos (…) even if we stop changing things. We have to respond to that change, while continuing to support photos.
- Recommendations are posts in your feed from accounts you don’t follow. The idea is help you discover new and interesting things, which you may not even know exist. If you see things in your recommendations that you’re not interested in, that means we’re doing a poor job of ranking, and we need to improve. And you can opt out of a recommendation, you can pause all recommendations for a month, or go to your feed with the accounts you follow. But we will keep trying to get better recommendations because we think it’s one of the best ways to help creators expand their reach. We want to do our best to help creators, especially small creators, and recommendations are one of the best ways to help them.”
Finally, Mosseri concluded his plea defending the need to evolve: “We are going to continue to need to evolve, because the world is changing rapidly, and we have to change with it.”
We will see if this clarification changes the impression that users have of the platform.
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