Instagram to become more focused on video

Silhouettes of mobile users are seen next to a screen projection of Instagram logo in this picture illustration taken March 28, 2018. Picture: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/

Silhouettes of mobile users are seen next to a screen projection of Instagram logo in this picture illustration taken March 28, 2018. Picture: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/

Published Jul 27, 2022

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Instagram is to become more focused on video.

The social media app – which has more than 600 million active monthly users – was initially known as a photo-sharing site but has launched more video-based features such as Reels in recent months and head of Instagram Adam Mosseri explained that while snaps are “part of their heritage”, the company needs to embrace the “shift” as it appears to be naturally indicated by consumers in the first place.

He said: “I’m hearing a lot of concerns about photos right now and how we’re shifting to video. I want to be clear – we’re gonna continue to support photos and they’re part of our heritage. I love photos and I know you do too. That said – and I need to be honest – I do believe more and more of Instagram is to become more video over time.

“We see this even if we change nothing. We see this even if you just look at the chronological feed. If you look at what people like and consume on Instagram, that is also shifting more and more to video over time, even when we stop changing anything. So we’re gonna have to lean into that shift while continuing to support photos.”

The social media boss also went on to address the new feature of Recommendations and explained why users are now seeing posts from creators that they do not follow.

Speaking in a video posted to Twitter, he said: “Recommendations are posts in your feed from accounts that you do not follow. The idea is to help you discover new and interesting things on Instagram that you might not know even exist. Now, if you’re seeing things on your feed that you’re not interested in, that means we’re doing a bad job ranking and we need to improve.

“You can X out a recommendation or even snooze them all for up to a month or go to your following feed. But we’re gonna try to get better at Recommendations because we think it’s one of the most effective ways to help Creators reach more people – and we wanna do best by creators.”

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