Instagram has struggled for much of the past eight years to remain independent from Facebook. In 2020 the fight was over.
Instagram has rolled out a range of features that are Facebookian in nature through and through. They are largely aimed at making you use the app longer (and often feel cluttered and incomplete too). It’s hard not to think of this as the moment when Instagram succumbed to Facebook’s worst tendency: focusing on growth at all costs, even if that means creating a product that is less enjoyable to use.
The changes are many. Facebook Messenger was integrated into Instagram DMs, a beat-by-beat TikTok clone was created and given its own section within the app, the primary ‘post a photo’ button was tucked away in a corner and an entire tab was left to groceries to do.
The most telling change was one of the less explosive: it was an adaptation to the app’s classic photo feed. Instagram now displays an endless row of algorithmically recommended posts once you view your friends’ photos. (On my feed I usually get to see vibrant photos of European models, with some ads in between.)
This is a simple growth hack (see: Facebook injects news stories and your friend’s friend’s questionable political group post into your news feed), but it’s the kind of cheap trick Instagram had been avoiding for the past decade. It clearly seems to contradict a goal outlined by Instagram’s founding CEO Kevin Systrom, who said that any time spent on the app should be “positive and intentional”. At that point, Instagram added a warning telling you when you were out of new posts in the feed, which served as a gentle nudge that you might be able to close the app and move on to something else.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has put increasing pressure on Instagram over the years to essentially play more like Facebook, despite an initial promise to leave the company alone, as detailed in Sarah Frier’s No filter, a chronicle of the rise of Instagram. The pressure culminated when Instagram co-founders walked out in late 2018, when they were replaced by Adam Mosseri, who previously ran Facebook’s news feed. While the app usually had a quiet 2019 on the surface – it changed the camera interface, hiding as counts and limited more problematic content – behind the scenes there was a significant shake-up of Instagram’s top leadership, and more orders were placed start to come from Facebook, The information reported last year.
That set the stage for this year, when those changes became visible to users. The home screen layout, which – aside from the addition of narrative bubbles at the top – had remained largely unchanged since Instagram’s inception, has been shuffled to make room for two new initiatives. The most notable of these, Reels, is a TikTok ripoff with no original ideas purely intended to crush an innovative and competitive product. The other addition, the Store tab, offers an overwhelming array of product posts in a way that combines the confusion of a Pinterest page with the boring Google Shopping ads.
This is not to say that Instagram has been “ruined” or even changed dramatically on the surface. The app is always teeming with brands and influencers, Stories had relentlessly sidelined Snapchat years ago as the hot new app, and Instagram’s aesthetic has long since shifted from a cultural phenomenon to an ubiquitous cliché. It’s still fun looking through your friends’ photos and the new features aren’t exactly bad – Reels offers creators another way to promote their work, and shopping is an obvious, but undercooked, addition to Instagram.
The difference is that so many previous changes felt on Instagram Instagram. In 2020, the changes felt like new services shocked on Instagram, so the moment we got bored, we could find our next distraction without closing the app. If that feels familiar, it might be because Facebook does too. This year, Instagram has not only built more services, the service is starting to demand more and more from you.