Instagram's New Algorithm Isn't That Bad

As it turns out, I may have overreacted.

I was going to write about how much I hated Instagram's new algorithm last week, but I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. I didn’t bat an eyelash when they changed their signature square format to a rectangle, but this time I felt they had gone too far. I gave myself a week to try it out, and it turns out I may have overreacted a bit to begin with.

If you didn't hear about it or if your feed wasn't bombarded with people asking you to turn on notifications for their posts, Instagram changed the order of the posts in your feed from chronological order to an order based on your interaction with the account's past posts. This bothered me because Instagram is unique in the sense that we already follow who we want to follow. We have curated our own feeds based on our personal preferences, so changing the order is unnecessary.

However after using it for a week, it turns out that this change isn't the end of the world like I thought it would be. My posts don't get updated enough to the point where posts get buried and I never see them again. And honestly, if they're at the bottom of my feed, maybe it's because I actually don't care to see them.

And from a digital marketing perspective, this pushes social media managers to step up their game. If what they are posting is good and their followers are engaging, they won't see an issue. Maybe they'll even benefit from the switch in algorithm. Marketers who do a good job will be rewarded and everyone else will be pushed to do better. It'll allow for the cream to rise to the top.

Sure, it's still not a change I'm happy about, but I see now that I may have jumped the gun on my reaction. As it turns out, not all change has to be bad.

Instagram, I forgive you.

Originally published on The Odyssey Online.