While reading all these articles that discuss the "competition" between Amazon, Google, and Facebook, I was reminded of all the drama surrounding Instagram a few months ago when they decided to completely change their algorithm.
In 2012, Facebook bought Instagram for approximately $1 billion. Ever since this merger, Facebook has only been making slight changes to the widely-popular app without completely transforming the platform. That all ended when a few months ago, Instagram announced that it would be showing posts that they think users would like, based off their activity. This instantly caused riots on the social media app, especially for those considered "Instagram famous." Why? It was believed that these suggested posts would show up in the user's feed, and the user would have to turn on notifications to see a particular user's post. Since most bloggers use Instagram to promote new posts on their site and to draw in new readers, this new update meant big problems.
In the end all the chaos surrounding the update turned out to be pointless. The new update only applied to the "search" section on the app and not the actual newsfeed. Meaning if a user goes to the search section, the app makes "suggestions" based off of your friends likes and your recent activity. However, I wouldn't be surprised if Instagram makes the leap to "in feed" suggestions like Facebook does now. With the innovation on Instagram "stories" (Instagram's take on Snapchat), it doesn't look to far off...
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