Instagram is introducing two new views — Favorites and Following.
Following brings back the option to view posts from followed accounts in a chronological order.
Favorites will show the latest posts from chosen accounts, such as best friends or favourite creators.
Both views will be chronological
Additionally, posts from accounts in Favorites will show up higher in the user’s home feed.
“We want you to be able to shape Instagram into the best possible experience, and giving you ways to quickly see what you’re most interested in is an important step in that direction,” said Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, in a blog post.
“Over time, we’re going to add more recommendations to your feed based on your interests — Favorites and Following are new ways to catch up on recent posts from the accounts you follow,” Mosseri said.
The Following feed was introduced after users asked for chronological feed.
“Over time, we’ve introduced more recommendations into the main feed because we think it’s important for us to help people discover new things, to learn about content on Instagram that they didn’t even know existed but they might enjoy and love but we also think it’s important and we’ve got a lot of feedback that people have access to a deterministic chronological feed just from the accounts that they’ve decided to follow. If you see my DMs we’ve gotten that request a lot and so we’re excited to announce that,” Mosseri said in a video announcing the feature.
To use Favorites and Following, users can tap on the top left of their homepage to choose what they see.
“Use Favorites to see the most recent posts from the accounts you’ve added to your favorites list. You can add up to 50 accounts to your list, and make changes to this list at any time — people are not notified when they are added or removed,” Mosseri further explained.
The main feed on Instagram, however, will continue to be ranked.
“It’s going to continue to be personalised. We believe in personalisation. We find that when we try and connect people with the candidate that they are most interested in, not only do they say they’re happy with Instagram overall, we’ll see that the average account reaches 50 per cent more followers than in a chronological feed world,” Mosseri said.
“We’re always working on new ways to improve your Instagram experience. We’ll continue to build features like Favorites and Following to give you more choice and control over what you see, and help make the time you spend on the app feel more intentional,” Mosseri further added.
Published on
March 24, 2022
