Instagram

We announced earlier, that Instagram would start showing users posts out of order, kind of like…Facebook.

The online photo-sharing social network has started rolling out the feature to users and everyone’s entered panic mode – especially models/twerkists/makeup artists and generally everyone else for whom Instagram likes is a key performance indicator.

They’ve been imploring their followers to turn on notifications for their profile, so they’d be notified as soon as those accounts post.

Well, someone’s getting cocky…

https://twitter.com/markhoppus/status/714580207127146500

Before, when things were a bit more…chronological, you could go to sleep, knowing that more followers usually translated to more likes, but now the algorithm has forever changed the playing field. Instagram says it’s there to improve the experience for the average user since most people only see a fraction of the posts they actually care about.

I call bullshit. If you pay attention, it’s easy to see how this could be a very economic decision. By changing the stakes, so that it’s harder to get discovered, Instagram could begin to upsell brands on its advertising packages. Don’t believe me? Think about when they did it for Facebook.

This looks a lot to me like, “spend more money to get more exposure”.

In other news, since the latest Instagram update, a large number of Twitter users have reported that the logout button has disappeared from their Instagram apps. The problem seems restricted to iOS users at the moment, and it’s made it near-impossible to switch accounts.

Instagram has acknowledged the bug and they say they’re working on a fix.

https://twitter.com/instagram/status/714912767166267392

Osarumen Osamuyi Author

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