Instagram cutting down on vanity?
Instagram recently announced testing of "removing" info on number of post likes (actually, only you should be able to see a number of your post likes, the rest should be able to see people who liked a post, but not a number of likes) and a "restrict" button for a protection against bullies.
According to Instagram, they are trying to deal with some problems, like the one where low numbers of likes can lead to a lower self-esteem with the younger (and pretty much target) audience on this social network.
"We are rethinking the whole experience of Instagram to address issues around wellbeing and to ensure the Instagram community has a positive experience on our platform,” Instagram said in a statement.
Since malicious side effects of a social media usage are hardly a novelty (expressions like Facebook/Insta- life, where all of us have perfect polished lives and social currency is a worth metrics above all others, are part of the discussion about negative aspects of a social media usage for a long time already), it looks a bit suspicious that the giants like Instagram all of the sudden want to do some about it, especially when it looks flagrantly undermining their business model (don't advertisers pay exactly for engagement, where most prominent KPI is actually a number of likes? Making these hidden will also seriously hurt engagment multiplication by the social proof effect).
Although I would like to consider this move as an act of a pure corporate altruism, for now I'm more likely to think that its primar motivation is to decrease power of the influencers (read: redirect their revenue to the platform paid promotion) and bots (although here Instagram seems to have had a bit of a schizophrenic relationship in the past: "hey, we don't want fake likes and followers! Oh, wait, real or fake, we live off of them, and who's gonna know anyway. Maybe to let some of them stick for a while...").
Whether this action is really geared toward "coming back to the roots"- providing a good quality content, not numbers, will actually depend on Instagram's next moves (I guess algorithm could also be tweaked to favor new over most popular content ). Let's see.
Oh and yeah, please do not forget to like this article- if you like it, of course (here on LinkedIn still counts, I guess ). ??
Marketing & Corporate Communications
5 年Dolaze te?ka vremena za obitelj Kardashian ??... Prvi glas. Ja to ne smatram lo?im. Vlasnik accounta ?e, prema ?lanku, ali samo on, i dalje imati uvid u broj lajkova i followera i na temelju njega ostvarivati prihode. Nelo?e.
Senior Digital Advertising Specialist at Infobip
5 年Interesting article, Muhamed. Thanks for sharing!? While any major update coming from platforms such as Facebook and Instagram is a strategy for increasing ad revenue, I'm always in favor of decisions that might make a positive impact. In this case, it would be helping out impressionable youth who often suffer from anxiety caused by being constantly exposed to other people's perfect lives. "I'm more likely to think that its primar motivation is to decrease power of the influencers" - this is an interesting thought. I'm curious to see how influencers will adapt to these new circumstances. My guess is they will need to find ways to motivate the audience to comment more, as the power of likes might move on to comments.? The good thing is that this will push both advertisers and influencers to get more creative in their content strategies, and I'm looking forward to seeing the outcome.?