Instagram Is the Newest Service to Reorder Your Timeline
A couple of weeks ago, Instagram announced that they would start rolling out a new feed that ditches chronological order in favor of a Facebook-like feed that’s based on what they think you’ll love. To fix this, you might have noticed that users were asking for notifications to be turned on. That’s what it’s all about.
If you’ve watched Instagram today, you’ve probably seen posts like the one above asking you to turn on notifications. The reason is simple: People are worried that a new algorithm that determines the order of photos in your feed will bury their content and you will never see it. This new Instagram feed will presumably work just like Facebook, where the photos will be ordered not by time and date, but by an algorithm that reorganizes your feed based on how you use Instagram. All photos will remain there, they will just be in a different order.
The supposed solution to this fictitious problem is to enable post notifications so that you get notified every time a user you like posts something. You heard this request all over Instagram this morning. This is a terrible solution and will surely delay your notifications, but if you want to do it, it’s simple:
- Tap the “…” icon in the upper right corner of the message.
- Click Enable Post Notifications.
That’s all. Now you will be inundated with notifications every time a user posts a photo.
However, while the notification meme circulating today suggests a new timeline will start tomorrow, this is completely wrong. Instagram took to Twitter today to clarify this :
So, nothing is changing now, but it will happen someday, so get ready for it. However, as NYMag points out , it doesn’t really matter to most of us. This will most likely only affect brands or people with impersonal feeds. If you only follow a few friends and not thousands of brands, the change is likely to be quite minor.
Perhaps most importantly, remember that algorithms are based on your behavior. If you want to always see someone’s posts, make sure you like or comment on their photos.