It’s neat how minor updates can majorly impact something. It may have gone right over your head but Instagram released an update today that changes the experience for creators and users. This update really shows that Instagram watches user’s behavior and reacts appropriately.
When you scroll through your news feed you may notice that descriptions do not fully display unless you expand by tapping ‘more’. Instagram is only allowing each post to display a limited number of text unless users want to read more.
What does this mean for the creators?
- You have a smaller time frame to tell your story through text. Your audiences’ attention will weigh more on the visual asset versus text. If most of your storytelling has been done using long form text, you’ll now need to captivate your audience enough for them to want to read more.
- Hashtags can easily be hidden in your post. If you can tell a compelling story in the collapsed view, there’s an opportunity to use thirty tags per post to extend the reach as far as possible for the expanded view.
- Instagram becomes more of what its original intentions were: Visually focused.
What does this mean for the user?
- User experience changes. News feed become less cluttered with hashtags and text heavy posts.
- Visual storytelling quality becomes better (hopefully) because it will over index vs. text.
Although this update seems small, it changes the experience for both parties. It’s great to see Instagram sticking to its roots and staying focused on what it originally set out to be.
