If you don’t like Instagram’s new full-screen feed that copies TikTok, you are not alone considering that the original photos-based app is now making this new feature which is very undercooked, available to more users out there. Well, Adam Mosseri, the social network head, has just posted a Twitter clip acknowledging that the video-focused trial feed is not yet good enough and will need to be improved before it reaches any more Instagram users.
Many high-profile celebrities and creators out there don’t appreciate Instagram changing its heritage and changing what it used to be and what users signed up for. But Adam Mosseri explains that the Instagram platform will invariably become more video-centric over time as the people out there enjoy consuming more video content as the time passes by, and also explains that even if they don’t edit any kind of feature on Instagram it will continue to be videos that will be on the forefront of content consumed.
Mosseri has defended the rise of recommended posts on user feeds by saying that there were the most effective and important ways for small creators to grow their audiences and also helping users understand and explore more things that they didn’t know existed previously. He went on to say that if someone doesn’t like the recommendations that they are being fed, “Instagram is not doing a good enough job at recommending posts” also introducing the ability for users to pause all recommendations for a month if they weren’t interested.
This post on Twitter is Instagram’s response to a very big mounting backlash against the video feed and recommendation efforts, as high-profile users like Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian recently blasted Instagram for trying to be TikTok, while many posts on Instagram and petitions have increasingly asked Instagram to become the original Instagram back again by returning to photos.
Although Moseri did ask for feedback from users, there is no guarantee that Instagram will change its course back to photos as meta. The parent company of Instagram has a very long history of duplicating features from social networks. But Adam might be right on this one as video is a very big part of content nowadays, and switching to this new form of content might be the best for Instagram to be sustainable in the new era of content consumption.
