Social media is constantly evolving, sometimes the changes are great ideas that make us happy, while others make us wonder what’s the point.
Instagram is the latest social media app to announced changes to how its users will experience the app.
The changes announced last Tuesday were extending videos duration to 60 seconds (as opposed to 15 seconds) and plans to alter the timeline viewing.
Apple users will be able to make videos out of multiple clips from the iPhone’s camera roll.
The new emphasis on videos is because in the last six months views of video content on Instagram saw an increase of more than 40 percent according to Instagram’s Facebook page.
If you’ve been on Instagram in the past two weeks you’ve likely seen the post from celebrities, “Insta Famous people,” and even your favorite account ask you to turn on the post notifications so you can be annoyed by Instagram whenever one of these types of accounts post something.
This is because Instagram is slowly transitioning timelines to showcase the accounts viewers give the most attention to rather than in chronological order.
In other words the accounts where you like everything on that page are now going to be the first thing you may see when opening the app instead of what was posted at the time you logged in.
This is the change that has everyone talking.
“Why can’t they leave things how they are?” asked student Ytzel Gonzalez.
Despite the popular opinion of loathing Instagram’s changes to the timeline, I’m all for it.
Back in April 2012 Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram for $1 billion dollars.
The style of timelines reflecting personal interest is nothing new. In fact, Facebook did the switch in 2009 and last month Twitter did the same thing.
Instagram is just the latest app to also use personal interest to make the app better.
“I think they’re making a mistake,” said Instagram user Lena Sandoval.
I do think that a big part of social media is that people want to know things or events as they happen but people will only tune in if their interest in the event or person is even there. So to me it makes perfect sense to change up the timelines.
Now I won’t have to scroll forever just to see an event I missed.