Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri says the app’s full-screen redesign is “not yet good” and speaks to the growing amount of recommended content in people’s feeds.
This is stated in a video Mosseri shared on Twitter this week, where he addresses users’ frustrations with recent Instagram changes.
In addition to recommending more content from people users aren’t following, Instagram is testing a TikTok-like overhaul of its user interface.
As the app strays further from what brought people to it, there’s an outcry from users to make Instagram Instagram again.
Mosseri admits there’s room for improvement regarding the full-screen redesign, so it may see some revisions before it rolls out to everyone.
Recommended posts in the main feed, on the other hand, aren’t going anywhere. Here’s what Mosseri has to say on the subject.
Instagram Full Screen Feed Is Not Good
Mosseri says the Instagram full-screen feed needs improvements, which is why it’s only available in a limited test.
“It’s a test to a few percentage of people out there, and the idea is that a more full-screen experience, not only for videos but for photos, might be a more fun and engaging experience. But I also want to be clear, it’s not yet good. And we’re going to have to get it to a good place if we’re going to ship to the rest of the Instagram community.”
Although it looks like Instagram mimics TikTok, Mosseri underscores his commitment to preserving the photo-sharing experience.
Whether people will maintain an interest in publishing photos is a whole other question, as activity on Instagram is heading more toward video sharing.
Mosseri continues:
“I want to be clear — we’re going to continue to support photos. It’s part of our heritage. I love photos and I know a lot of you out there love photos too. That said, I need to be honest, I do believe that more and more of Instagram is going to become video over time. We see this even if we change nothing.
We see this even if you just look at chronological feed. If you look at what people share on Instagram that’s shifting more and more to videos over time. If you look at what people like and consume and view on Instagram, that’s also shifting more and more to video over time even when we stop changing anything. So we’re going to have to lean into that shift while continuing to support photos.”
Recommended Posts Are Here To Stay
Another change to Instagram people argue is “not good” is all the recommended content in the main feed from people users don’t follow.
Mosseri explains this change is part of a long-term initiative to improve content discovery.
Instagram has no plans to cull recommended content from peoples’ feeds. However, the ‘following’ tab allows people to catch up with content from accounts they choose to see.
“Recommendations are posts in your feed from accounts that you do not follow. The idea is to help you discover new and interesting things on Instagram that you might not know even exist. “It’s a test to a few percentages of people out there, and the idea is that a
Now, if you’re seeing things in your feed that are recommendations that you’re not interested in, that means we’re doing a bad job ranking, and we need to improve. And you can X out a recommendation, you can even snooze all recommendations for up to a month or go to your ‘following’ feed.
But we’re going to continue to try to get better at recommendations because we think it’s one of the most effective and important ways to help creators reach more people. We want to do our best by creators, particularly small creators, and we see recommendations as one of the best ways to reach a new audience and grow their following.”
Source: @Mosseri on Twitter
Featured Image: 4zevar/Shutterstock
