In a series of microbattles with big tech companies consistently lost by users, it appears we’ve finally won one. After an avalanche of criticism, Instagram is walking back a few of their more recent changes.
Recently, Instagram started testing out a version of the app with a full-screen feed, a pivot to video, or an increase of recommended posts. It looked a lot like TikTok, and everyone hated it.
“I’m glad we took a risk — if we’re not failing every once in a while, we’re not thinking big enough or bold enough,” Instagram chief Adam Mosseri told Platformer’s Casey Newton in an interview. “But we definitely need to take a big step back and regroup. [When] we’ve learned a lot, then we come back with some sort of new idea or iteration. So we’re going to work through that.”
This comes just three days after Mosseri released a video addressing the app’s updates that have caused users — including Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian — to demand he “MAKE INSTAGRAM INSTAGRAM AGAIN.” Users don’t want another TikTok or Pinterest. They just want to see pictures of their friends.
Mosseri said on July 26 that “more and more” of the photo-sharing app is “is going to become video.” But he knows the full-screen feed is “not yet good.”
“We’re going to have to get it to a good place if we’re going to ship it to the rest of Instagram,” he said. And he’s echoing that statement today, telling Newton: “For the new feed designs, people are frustrated and the usage data isn’t great. So there I think that we need to take a big step back, regroup, and figure out how we want to move forward.”
Mosseri told Newton that Instagram will temporarily reduce the number of recommendations users will see on the app. But on Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that recommended posts and accounts make up about 15 percent of what you see on Facebook — by the end of 2023, Zuckerberg plans on doubling that number.
No matter how long Instagram exists and how many millions of users flock to it, it perpetually seems inchoate and unsure of which way to step next. Each following move displeases users. There will no doubt be moves in the future that Instagram will release and infuriate its user base once again: like borrowing from its competitors TikTok and BeReal.
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