Why do all of these social networks now think that they know us better than we know ourselves? We have dealt with timeline order changes on Facebook. We have had to endure Facebook endlessly changing algorithms that affected our Fan pages and made it almost impossible for some of us to get good interaction. Twitter has decided what we should see first. Even Pinterest made similar changes by adding “Picked for you” content. And now Instagram is jumping on the bandwagon.
To those that matter in the corner offices of all of these social networks: Here’s a newsflash – WE DO NOT LIKE YOU DECIDING WHAT WE GET TO SEE FIRST. PERIOD!! Haven’t you all been paying attention to the feedback? Did you see the uproar on social media?
[Tweet “.@Instagram Please do NOT change our feeds. Thank you! #LeaveInstagramAlone”]
You cannot trick us. We know that the true reason behind this is so that we see paid ads first. In a short and to the point post on the Instagram blog they said:
You may be surprised to learn that people miss on average 70 percent of 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.
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 optimizing the order — all the posts will still be there, just in a different order.
If your favorite musician shares a video from last night’s concert, it will be waiting for you when you wake up, no matter how many accounts you follow or what time zone you live in. And when your best friend posts a photo of her new puppy, you won’t miss it.
We’re going to take time to get this right and listen to your feedback along the way. You’ll see this new experience in the coming months.
Ok, so you say you are listening to our feedback, right? The only feedback that I have seen so far is us saying “PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE OUR FEEDS!” Here’s the part that really gets me…
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…
Instagram, question… who are you to tell me or anyone else what I am interested in? Just like we didn’t like it when Facebook did it, we don’t like that you are planning to do it. The problem with this model is that eventually, we realize that we have not seen posts from our cousin in weeks.
We visit their page directly and realize that we have missed a dozen new photos! As a business owner, we may post a great photo that we want our fans who have followed us to see because they are interested in our content. Yet, if I am understanding your model correctly, based on when we post, you, the wonderful powers of Instagram, may decide that my followers do not need to see it at that time. Not cool.
Keep Instagram Chronological! – Sign the Petition! https://t.co/MgkIsEjEBq via @Change #leaveinstagramalone #PleaseStepIn
— Lani Khong (@lanikhong) March 16, 2016
Yes, we understand that for most of us we get the use of these social media platforms for free. We also understand that it takes money to keep these things going. We understand that ads are a way to drum up business. However, there are ways to do that without making the platforms that we have grown to love less useful to us. We still use these platforms to connect with friends and family. And some of us are business owners, but we are still the little guys. We don’t have the funds to pay to get every one of our posts to the top of feeds. We use these networks to connect with our followers for purposes of business. By changing the feeds to what YOU think our followers want to see, you are basically ensuring that our posts only get seen if YOU think they are worthy. If you want to push ads, then push the ads, but leave the rest of the feed alone.
I respect your opinion Mother. I can see that you are deeply concerned by this issue and I hope that Instagram recognizes the concern of the people and decides to #leaveinstagramalone. This is a Democracy!! Power to the People!!
You can’t stand in the way of profit I mean progress.
HA! So true.
Thank you for writing about this! I signed the petition!
You’re welcome! I hope it works. We don’t need anything getting in the way of sharing our toe pics! 🙂
I think it’s a huge mistake on Instagram’s part. I can see it turning a lot of people off, including myself. I signed the petition.
Agreed! I hope that they reconsider.