Instagram may have started off as a photo-sharing app, but as you’ll know from your own use of the platform, video has been playing an ever-increasing role over the years.
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri on Tuesday revealed how he believes the platform will include even more video moving forward.
Sharing his thoughts in a video (what else!), Mosseri said: “ I need to be honest, I do believe that more and more of Instagram is going to become video over time.”
👋🏼 There’s a lot happening on Instagram right now.
I wanted to address a few things we’re working on to make Instagram a better experience.
Please let me know what you think 👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/x1If5qrCyS
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) July 26, 2022
Mosseri said he was responding to concerns among the community that Instagram was actively favoring video over photos.
But the CEO said that even if Instagram itself makes no changes to the service, video content will naturally increase as more people choose to upload moving pictures rather than still images.
At the same time, Mosseri was keen to reassure the Instagram community that the service will always be a home for photos, saying: “I want to be clear, we’re going to continue to support photos, it’s a part of our heritage. You know I love photos and I know a lot of you out there love photos, too.”
Instagram’s ongoing work to develop video on its service was highlighted just last week when it announced that all future videos running for less than 15 minutes and published by public accounts would be turned into Reels, making the content viewable by many more people on the platform, instead of only the poster’s followers.
Mosseri also addressed several other things happening on Instagram right now. For example, he said that some folks will currently be seeing a full-screen version of their feed as part of a trial for a new feature that it might introduce.
“It’s a test to a few percentage of people out there,” the CEO said. “The idea is that a more full-screen experience, not only for videos but also for photos, might be a more fun and engaging experience. But I also want to be clear, it’s not yet good, and we’re going to have to get it to a good place if we’re going to ship it to the rest of the Instagram community.”
Finally, he had a word to say about Recommendations, also known as Suggested Posts from users that you don’t follow but which Instagram thinks you might like.
Mosseri noted that if you’re seeing recommendations that you don’t like, “that means that we’re doing a bad job ranking, and we need to improve.”
He reminded users they can “x” a recommendation to get rid of it, and also snooze the recommendations feature for up to a month. Another option is to switch to your carefully curated followers-only feed.
“We’re going to continue to try and get better at recommendations because we think it’s one of the most effective and important ways to help creators reach more people,” Mosseri said. “We want to do our best by creators, particularly small creators, and we see recommendations as one of the best ways to help them reach a new audience and grow their following.”
The Instagram chief acknowledged that the platform is going through a lot of changes just now, but said that it “needs to evolve, because the world is changing quickly and we’re going to have to change along with it.”