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Instagram Chronological Feed is Back!

Educational Newsletters

Only  4 months since the original announcement, but Instagram is finally making a chronological feed available to all users, along with a new feed-filtering option that will allow you to scroll through posts that are only from your favorite accounts.

These features have been in the limited testing phase since January but were released to the general public at the end of March. It is worth noting that these features are only available on the mobile versions of the app, not the desktop version.

The reasoning behind this change might not be for the reason you’re expecting. It has happened with Twitter many times, but whenever companies remove chronological timelines, the userbase tends to dislike these changes. For many, it makes users miss content from people they are following, which creates a negative user experience.

But this isn’t why Instagram made the change back. In December, Company head Adam Mosseri had a hearing before a Senate panel about potential harms the app could bring to young people using the app.

The thought was that users are being manipulated by the Instagram algorithms by only showing users content that is similar to other content you’ve interacted with. This has the possibility of forming echo chambers, which can be dangerous on social media platforms.

But no reason to talk about why it’s being done. Let’s talk about why it’s such a good thing for social media marketers. The content users typically interact with the most are not business profiles, so when the feed was not chronological, there was a strong chance that your content was not being shown to all your followers.

These new additions mean there are now three options for viewing your Instagram feed: the main, algorithmic Home feed; the chronological feed (Following); and the new Favorites feed, which only consists of accounts you choose.

If you are a business that is trying to utilize organic posts, be sure to create a new post letting your followers know about this new change and to edit their feed to either Following, or Favorites and to add your account to their favorites list to make sure they don’t miss any new deals.

To keep up with all of these new Instagram announcements, be sure to come back every week for new stories. And if you need help implementing an effective Instagram strategy, reach out to us for a free consultation.