Instagram could be making DM interactions more important than ever
By Meg Dowell
Instagram started out as a photo sharing app that prioritized users' home feeds for engagement. That could soon be changing.
More and more, Instagram has been encouraging users to interact with their followers in stories and direct messages (DMs). Some users are now reporting that the messaging icon has replaced the "+" (create post) icon at the bottom of their app interface. For most users, it still sits at the top right of the screen while in the app.
Instagram, launched in 2010, was originally a mobile check-in app similar to Foursquare that shifted to photo-sharing, whcih was its main focus for many years. Like many social media feeds of the late 2000s and early 2010s, users' "feeds" used to only show content posted by people they followed. It was the norm to only see content from friends or celebrities you actively followed.
Over time, the social media landscape changed. Feeds designed "For You" (not necessarily people you followed) became more widespread across various apps, meaning that an algorithm chose the photos and videos users saw instead of only displaying content from their followers.
Many users got tired of this -- they didn't want to see ads or content from people they didn't know; they wanted to interact with their friends and followers. Posting to stories and sharing photos and videos in DMs became much more common. And Instagram noticed.
Social networking apps rely on user engagement to thrive, and users aren't always successful when they push back against the algorithm. Shifting mroe focus on posting in Instagram Stories resulted in ads and promoted content popping up as users scrolled through the stories of accounts they followed. DMs seem to be the most effective escape for those who want to interact with certain accounts exclusively without ads and promoted posts interrupting their interactions.
Does this mean ads will one day follow users into DMs as well? Anything is possibe. But Instagram seems to be doing its best to lean into prioritizing messaging, though it's unclear if and when the new app layout will roll out to more or all users eventually.