What Instagram’s controversial change really means for us

I woke up this morning puzzled by the news of Instagram’s revolutionary change.

Our favourite chronological photo feed will be replaced with one ordered by an algorithm. Just yesterday, Instagram announced that our feed will be “reordered to show the moments we believe you will care about the most, based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting and the timeliness of the post.” Instagram reassures that all the posts will still be there, just in a different order.

In September 2015, Instagram announced that they have hit 400M users, placing it as one of the fastest-growing social site around the world. Fast leaving Twitter in the dust, Facebook started monetisation strategies with Instagram ads in an attempt to sustain its rapid rise in ad revenue. Although we can’t be sure exactly how much Instagram contributed to Facebook’s revenue in 2015, analysts expect Instagram to be a $5.3 billion cash cow by 2017.

Fast forward six months since the launch of Instagram ads, we get the algorithmic feed today. The golden question is, why did Facebook change Instagram into a visual-centric version of itself and how does this affect users and businesses?

Why fix what is not broken?

At first glance, this decision does not make much sense. We already have the News Feed on Facebook. Why would we need another algorithmic feed on Instagram?

Users have come to love Instagram for its chronological timeline, where they can view photos and videos of the people they follow and see what they are up to at any given time. Big brands and small businesses alike have considered the appeal of visual content marketing on Instagram because of its 100 percent organic reach. Their Instagram posts will always be included in all followers’ timelines, unlike Facebook, which distributes content to a limited group of your followers.

The positional real estate of our feed is no longer homogenous in value.

The introduction of this algorithm implies that the positional real estate of our feed is no longer homogenous in value.

The top positions, undoubtedly the more important ones, are now worth more than the lower ones. This suggests that while brands that have established their sizeable fan base on Instagram will stand to benefit more from the algorithm, since they receive more engagements and will therefore rank higher in the feed, companies that join the platform recently could struggle to get enough attention.

So what can these new players do? You guessed it — they pay to play. Now, they can get more businesses to part with their cash to occupy top spots.

But merely increasing the number of advertisers is not enough.

To attract more ad revenue, you will need an increase in two more metrics: more users and more time spent on the platform. As Facebook continues to work its magic to increase the user base in the background, the algorithm could serve its purpose to increase the amount of time users spend on Instagram.

Stated in yesterday’s announcement, Instagram’s CEO Kevin Systrom believes that “as the social site grows, people miss about 70 percent of the posts in their Instagram feed. What [the algorithm] is about is making sure that the 30 percent you see is the best 30 percent possible.”

How does this affect users?

Brian Blau, VP at Gardner, says in a New York Times article, “These companies want to always, always give you the next best thing to look at. If an algorithm can give you much more engaging content more frequently, you’ll stick around longer.”