Instagram will no longer show posts in chronological order and instead serve up tailored pictures and videos, in a similar way to its parent company Facebook.
In a blog post, Facebook said the change was sparked by the insight that, with an increasingly global user base, people miss on average 70% of content in their feeds.
“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,” it said.
“To improve your experience, your feed will soon be ordered to show the moments we believe you will care about the most. The 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. As we begin, we’re focusing on optimising the order — all the posts will still be there, just in a different order.”
The move could have an effect from brand accounts appearing in a feed if users are not engaging with the content. “We are doing this to show people more of the content they want to see, including content from businesses,” Instagram said.
Instagram’s other co-founder, CTO Mike Krieger, told The Times that the change to Instagram might not be as big of a deal to users because its feed is made up of photos and users often follow people from all over the world.