On March 23, 2022,
Instagram announced two new features, known as “Favorites” and “Following,” to its photo and video sharing platform. The Favorites tool allows users to choose their top 50 accounts to follow, which are then given a star and listed higher up in chronological order on their home feed. No notifications are sent out to others regarding their status on someone else’s Favorites list, and users can change the list at any time. The Following feature shows posts from people that users follow in chronological order as well.
The change comes after several other shifts the social media platform has made. In December 2021, Meta, Instagram’s parent company,
changed its algorithm to prioritize Reels, which are videos posted on the social media platform. “We’re going to double down our focus on video,” Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, shared. “We’re no longer just a photo-sharing app.” When users create a Reel, it can be up to one minute in length, and can be recorded and edited directly in the Instagram app. The video appears on the user’s feed and the discovery page where visitors can explore content.
Some companies that previously posted images with captions are finding themselves either lowered in priority or having to shift to videos.
Lauren Rad, an independent knitwear designer, has been on Instagram since 2012 and uses the platform to connect with new audiences for her designs.
“I’ve ridden out a lot of changes,” she told The Epoch Times. “The biggest challenge has been the push for more video content. Many creative business owners are introverts who shy away from being on camera. We’ve embraced video cautiously with some specialized techniques.” These include muted videos in which the subject talks but captions are displayed instead of their actual voice and behind-the-scenes videos that show hands working.
Rad, whose website is known as
A Bee In The Bonnet, has observed other creative business owners shifting to different platforms, including the
Making app, which is designed for artists who want to share their projects. “It feels less frenetic than Instagram does, which is more in line with the slow making ethos many of us embrace,” Rad said.
Others have shifted with videos and used the features to jumpstart new endeavors.
Marina Victoria, co-founder of CADMEN brands—which include apparel and barbershop-related products and services—with more than seven years of experience in social media marketing, says she has adapted to each change to meet consumers’ expectations.
“When I first started, Instagram or even Facebook was all about posting random pictures loaded with long captions and hashtags,” she told The Epoch Times. “Nowadays, as a response to TikTok, the content king on Instagram is entertaining short videos. Viewer attention spans are noticeably short and getting shorter with each iteration.” Instead of watching 10-minute vlogs that once dominated social media, many users are looking for quick, attention-grabbing clips. “The ideal video length is 15 to 20 seconds,” Victoria noted.
Given the recent changes, posting consistently is key to getting views, according to Victoria. “The best posting frequency is at least one Reel per day,” she said. The benefit lies in the duration of the videos’ reach. “Reels continue to amass views and shares even after being up for months, sometimes even getting a second wind and going viral more than once,” Victoria added.
To keep up with the changes, businesses can monitor their metrics to see how their content is performing, according to Tim Hill, CEO of
Social Status, a social media analytics company. “Instagram metrics include impressions or the number of users who saw your posts, click-throughs, follower growth, and engagement rate through the number of shares, comments, likes, and saves,” Hill told The Epoch Times. “While these metrics may still apply, business owners, marketers, and analysts should also care about watch time, average view duration, re-watches, and average completion rate when planning their next Instagram marketing campaign.”
Several other features rolling out in 2022 will likely lead to further changes. Following Facebook’s launch of Subscriptions, which took place in 2020,
Instagram announced in January that the platform will introduce subscription services to content creators and users. The feature allows subscribers to gain access to exclusive content and benefits within the same platform.
Parental controls, offered through the
Family Center of Instagram, now make it possible for parents to supervise their children’s accounts. There are also tools to limit the amount of time teens spend on the platform. A
safety feature first introduced in December 2021 is aimed at helping teens manage their hours. It is set up to advise young people to take a break after scrolling for a certain amount of time.
In early 2022, Instagram released a feature allowing users
to like stories on the platform without having to send a direct message (known as a DM) to the creator. It also introduced
3D Avatars in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, which lets users access designs and interact on the platform via their avatar.
