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I’ve Seen the Future of Instagram, and it is Bleak

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Instagram logos laid out horizontally. Ominous red and black lightingI opened my Instagram app yesterday to see something worrisome. A page greeted me, telling my of Instagram’s new “Story-like” feed. Now you swiped horizontally to go between different photos, slowly crawling through your feed one photo at a time, with the option to swipe up on them to comment or react. I frantically searched the settings for a way back, but found no way to turn it off.

Oh no.

How could this happen to us? Was 2018 not bad enough that we needed to top it with that?

Facebook, owner of Instagram, is famous for creating user interface (UI) updates that users hate interacting with. They’ve thrown Marketplace shortcuts on your menubar, sorted your news feed by repetitive memes you’ve already seen, hid privacy settings, removed important items from menus, and more. The company is infamous for making UI changes that benefit advertisers more than users, and this one was a doozy. The update forced you to spend more time looking at each image or, as Instagram would prefer, ads. Instead of swiping quickly past obvious ads, the new UI would force you to spend a little bit more time looking at the ads.

Again, things users hate but advertisers love.

Instagram claimed it was a bug, an unintentional rollout of a feature they were testing. Reactions to it ranged from hate to love to a shrug of defeat.

Mostly hate though.

Okay, it was entirely hate.

Double Tap to 🤮

Due to the UI of Tinder, I’ve accidentally superliked someone while trying to close the app on the iPhone XS. It was an unintentional match and awkwardness ensued. Dating in 2018 is weird.

Instagram has a feature, tap twice on a photo to quick like it. It’s great, it’s convenient, and it’s fun. Send some love your friend’s way with a double tap. But, by tapping on the left or right of the screen to navigate between posts, you might end up liking a whole lot of posts you didn’t mean to like. This is fine in stories, because you can’t like stories with a double tap.

You’re also going to end up tapping on ads unintentionally. This is likely why Instagram was considering this design. Since you can’t quickly scroll through these posts like you can in a normal feed, you’re spending more time looking at each ad. Also, since the interface is based on tapping as well as swiping, and you have a more narrow swipe area, you’re more likely to accidentally click on ads. Many ads only pay for interactions. It’s in Instagram’s best interest if you’re tapping their ads. Since neither they nor advertisers can be 100% certain of the difference between an actual ad click and an accidental one, Instagram can make money and advertisers have a slightly greater chance of putting their product in front of your eyes.

By the way, ads aren’t useless. I purchased Phone Loops smartphone straps off of an Instagram post, and I love them. Ads aren’t bad. Obtrusive interfaces that sideline content to show more ads are bad.

Stop and Go Scrolling

Horizontal scrolling was bad enough. And tap to scroll? Obviously just a ploy to get you to accidentally tap ads. But what made this truly frustrating was the NYC cab-like style of stop and go. You could swipe, the image would fly in, and then it would stop. No inertia. This means you spend more time on each photo, which is great… if you want to spend that much time on every photo. But, more likely, you scroll fast so you can get past ads and less creative or uninteresting photos. You’re likely not doing a thesis for a photo class on composition for each and every photo in your feed.

Instagram wants you spending more time on each post because it’ll mean spending more time on ads and an increased chance of interacting with a post. Interaction with posts means staying in the app longer.

Usually. It doesn’t work when the UI is so bad it causes frustrated users to close the app after going through 5 photos and giving up.

Coming Soon to a Phone Near You?

Instagram claims the update was a bug. Users aren’t buying it. Mostly because the “bug” came with a tutorial, as you can see below.

https://twitter.com/nktgill/status/1078395837489672192

However, this was almost certainly a bug. The feature itself was not a bug, but the rollout was. Instagram may have intended to roll this feature out to a select group of beta testers. Instead, they enabled it on every phone. Yes, enabled. This update didn’t require an app update. It was already in our downloaded apps. Instagram only had to enable it.

https://twitter.com/gbaroth/status/1078314142157594624

App size is important. Users are more likely to download and keep smaller apps. If an app is too bloated, people will delete it. Therefore, for Instagram to have included this feature in their app they must have put some faith in it. They may have expected users to tolerate or even like this update. But they didn’t. They really didn’t. I spent a while laughing at memes on Twitter, looking for positive posts. I couldn’t find any. The only ones with anything positive to say were being obviously sarcastic.

It’s possible Instagram will take this idea back to the drawing board, but we’re not done with it. They may keep aspects of it, such as the stop and go nature of the feed to keep your eyes looking at ads longer, or horizontal scrolling. Instagram wasn’t doing this test with the only possibility being a new release. They were looking to A/B test, learn which features worked, and release only those. Instead, they found their users disgusted with the new design. Fortunately, the app is back to normal now.

Whether or not it will stay that way is up to Instagram. But I’m sure their social media managers and customer service representatives are praying Instagram stays the same.

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