Instagram is expanding its feed today with the launch of âsuggested posts.â? These posts, from accounts you donât follow, will show up after youâve reached the end of your feed and give you the option to keep scrolling with Instagramâs suggestions. Up until now, the feed has been entirely determined by usersâ preferences and the people they follow.
For the past couple of years, Instagram has shown users a message when they reach the end of their feeds, meaning theyâve seen every post over the past two days from people they follow. With suggested posts, theyâll have the option to keep scrolling past that marker for more content. (That message will still be there along with the option to revisit old posts.)
The suggested posts wonât be the same ones that show up in Explore. Theyâll be related to the content that people already follow, whereas Explore aims to point people toward adjacent content, says Julian Gutman, head of product at Instagram Home. He used space content, which he follows and engages with on his feed regularly, as an example. A suggested post might be a new space photo from someone he doesnât follow, whereas his Explore page might contain posts related to physics more broadly.
Gutman declined to comment on how often people actually reach the end of their feeds on a daily basis. There will be ads in suggested posts, and only photos and videos posted to the grid will show up for now, meaning you wonât see teased IGTV or Reels content.
The move feels like a major reversal from Instagramâs stance two years ago on screen time. When it launched the end of feed notification, the companyâs former CEO and co-founder, Kevin Systrom, positioned it as a decision made with usersâ mental health in mind. He said at the time that the company was working on âtools that will help the Instagram community know more about the time they spent on Instagram,â adding that âany time should be positive and intentional.â? But suggested posts could easily keep people on the app for longer.
Gutman says the product wasnât designed to keep people glued to their phones.
âI think for us this really came from a vision a couple years ago around people really seeing feed as a place for their interests, and with the improvement in machine learning and our ability to kind of make it easier for you to see some more of those posts that are on Instagram every day, and really bring that personalized relevance to you,â? he says. âSo we just want to make it really easy for people to see that [relevant content] when they get to the end of their feed. Thatâs really the motivation here, make it easier for you to go deeper on your interest.â?
The suggested posts also feel like Instagram is taking a cue from TikTok, which throws users into a continuous feed of content that never ends. Itâs part of whatâs made the app so successful. Of course, lengthening the feed also gives Instagram more ad space, allowing it to further monetize. Itâs a win-win for Instagram, even if it means users will potentially end up spending more time than ever in the app.
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