With the beginning of a new year, all social media platforms are going to have newer plans for their demanding yet loyal users and viewership. Instagram is a platform that had a mixed year in 2022, breaking a new record for monthly active users (2 billion), but also adapting TikTok’s short video format and, at least in part, losing its own identity.
The fact that Instagram is no longer a novel application seems to be its biggest problem. Because all of its tools and features are so imitative, it is no longer a cultural leader in the same way that it once was. In addition, because of its insistence on highlighting more content from users that you don’t follow, the app has moved further away from its original purpose and into a space somewhere between YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, and even the earlier versions of Facebook.
According to Mosseri, Instagram’s primary areas of attention that were shared by him are:
Encouraging creativity in others
This, according to Mosseri, is the foundation upon which Instagram was established “back in the day with those beautiful photo filters and wacky frames.” The “crazy” features he’s alluding to actually originated with Snapchat, but Instagram was the first significant platform to introduce various filters and overlays for photographs, allowing you to personalize your image postings.
Along those lines, you can anticipate the addition of more visual customizing and editing tools on Instagram. You can expect that Instagram will be aiming to introduce more tools along these lines over the course of the next year. The social network that can most easily support streamlined 3D production, in all of its varied applications, stands to win out in the AR/VR revolution.
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Encouraging people to find their passions
In order to accomplish this, Instagram shall change user behavior away from what they are used to and love (viewing the most recent posts from the individuals and profiles they have chosen to follow) and toward a new, TikTok-like experience that is no longer focused on your own well selected social graph.
A feed algorithm is also unnecessary as a result of this. Based on the number of pages and users you follow, the algorithm’s original reasoning was that there are so many postings that you might see each day that an algorithm is required to sort them in order to display just the most pertinent ones to you. But Instagram is currently incorporating additional content into the mix.
Encourage relationships between persons
The final factor is the utilization of the main Instagram feed for content discovery. More individuals are now sharing and conversing about posts in DMs and Stories, which represents a new change in social engagement.
People used to openly share posts as a way to communicate with one another and to reveal more about their own particular interests. However, as worries about polarising speech and “cancel culture” have grown, more people have been selective about the content they share on their main feeds. This has led to a greater trend toward more private sharing and interaction regarding the content in smaller, private groups. Instagram has been attempting to capitalize on this with fresh features like “Notes,” which lets users send a conversation starter in a bubble similar to Stories above your Direct inbox.
Overall, Instagram will continue down the same path it has been on for the previous 12 months, with the biggest change being a move away from leveraging the discovery of content in the feed to the main feed.
Instagram wants to follow the latest trends, so you could want to follow a similar path with your plan. Or, at the very least, you’ll be focusing on what Instagram wants to emphasize, which can assist your platform performance.
