So we all know Instagram is no longer a “photo-sharing platform”. But what does that mean with the new Home feed they’ve given us? I wasn’t going to write anything about this, but then I watched this video from Jonny Keeley over on YouTube, and it got me thinking.
Personally, I’m seeing three feeds now in the Instagram app on iPhone. Home, Following, Favourites. Let’s explore them one by one:
Home: This is where everything lives. As I scroll, I see a few posts from people I follow, then every 3–5 posts is a suggested post from someone that I do not follow, however, the algorithm is clearly working quite well here, as these are regularly posts that I like the look of. Interestingly, I don’t see too many Reels in here, which I must admit, I was expecting to see everywhere.
Following: Chronological is back! Personally though, I expected this to be my favourite place. Posts in time order from everyone I follow. However, this is rarely any different to my “Home” feed. I will admit, that before Instagram implemented these new feeds, I went on an Instagram mission, as I’ve previously written about. (You can see that here). As such, I see no advantage to this feed, only that there are no suggested posts that I’ve come across.
Favourites: Now I’m sure I’ve seen a few people post saying that for them, this is showing as Friends. Maybe this is something Instagram are A/B testing and we’ll find out which they’re going to use at a later date. Again, for me, I’m not seeing much of a difference from my Home feed, however, this could be as a result of the changes I made personally.
What does this mean? I suspect that the changes they have made, are changes that I made personally. For many Instagram users, I would say that Instagram have done the work I put in myself for you. If you don’t want to waste the days of edits I made, and believe me, thanks to only being able to unfollow and refollow x number of accounts at a time, this did take me a few days to fix, then these new feeds are going to be great. Although you do still need to put a bit of effort in for the Favourites/Friends feed to work for you. It does ultimately mean that there’s a good chance you’ll use these new feeds to make sure you haven’t missed anything as you scroll through, which gives the algorithm what they want. You on their platform and nobody else’s for longer.
It’s also worth looking at the screen time that you’re in their app. For me, I’m averaging 30 minutes per day. That involves a quick scroll, some comments, likes and shares of posts and I’m done. As an average, I tend to open the app around 6 times per day, so I actually only spend 5 minutes at a time on Instagram, and feel that that is more than enough for me.
I’d love to know which feeds you’ve found yourself using most since this new update. I do sometimes wonder whether this is Instagram telling us that although we think we wanted a chronological feed, we don’t need it, and that their algorithm knows us better than we know ourselves, but let’s hope that’s not the case.