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Instagram is expanding its feed today with the launch of ‘Suggested Posts’. These posts, from accounts you don’t follow, will show up once you reach the end of your feed and give you the option to continue scrolling through Instagram suggestions. Until now, the flow has been entirely determined by user preferences and the people they follow.
For the past two years, Instagram has shown users a post when they reach the end of their feed, meaning they’ve seen all of the posts from people they follow in the past two days. With Suggested Posts, they will have the option to continue scrolling this marker for more content. (This post will still be there with the option to review old posts.)
Suggested posts will not be the same as those displayed in Explore. They’ll be tied to the content people are already following, while Explore aims to steer people to adjacent content, says Julian Gutman, product manager at Instagram Home. He used spatial content, which he follows and interacts with regularly in his flow, as an example. A suggested post might be a new spatial photo of someone they aren’t following, while their Explore page might contain more physics-related articles.
Gutman declined to comment on how often people reach the end of their feeds on a daily basis. There will be advertisements in the suggested posts, and only photos and videos posted on the grid will appear at this time, which means you won’t see any IGTV or Reels content teased.
The move looks like a major reversal of Instagram’s stance two years ago on screen time. When he launched the end-of-stream notification, former CEO and co-founder of the company, Kevin Systrom, positioned it as a decision made with the mental health of users in mind. He said at the time that the company was working on “tools that will help the Instagram community learn more about time spent on Instagram,” adding that “any time should be positive and intentional.” But the suggested posts could easily keep people on the app longer.
Gutman says the product wasn’t designed to keep people glued to their phones.
“I think for us it really came from a vision from a few years ago that people really see flows as a place for their interests, and with the improvement of machine learning and our ability to to make it easier for you to see those posts that are on Instagram every day that really bring you that personalized relevance, ”he says. “So we just want people to see this very easily [relevant content] when they reach the end of their feeding. This is really the motivation here, it is easier for you to deepen your interest. “
The suggested posts also make Instagram look like TikTok, which immerses users in a continuous stream of endless content. This is part of what made the app so successful. Of course, the lengthening of the feed also gives Instagram more ad space, which allows it to monetize itself more. It’s a win-win for Instagram, even if it means users will potentially end up spending more time in the app than ever before.
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