Love it or hate it, Instagram is changing!

Written By Cristy Houghton

It’s no secret that social media platforms need to rapidly adapt to keep up with changes in user behaviour and the social landscape. With TikTok’s arrival in ​​2016, it not only took on Instagram’s core market but also reshaped how users digest social content. Since then, Instagram Reels have skyrocketed in interest and approval, defining the social media platform for 2022. 

Due to the soaring interest in full-screen, short-video content from apps such as TikTok, Instagram has announced further changes to its platform, aiming to become a more immersive experience. This has a further impact on the types of content we create and where we can better grow reach and engagement for our business posts.

Here’s a summary of what our customers can expect with Instagram’s updates:

New aspect ratio grid

Full Screen Imagery

The biggest and most noticeable change coming to our screens is full-screen imagery. Content will now be viewed in your feeds in a 9:16 ratio, filling the screen similarly to Reels. You may have already noticed this in your profile, as the feature rolls out.

Adam Mossouri, Head of Instagram, said, “We are moving Instagram to where the video is a bigger part of the experience”. He then follows with, “The future of photos and videos is mobile-first, they are 9:16, and immersive.”

The square-tiled Instagram we’ve been familiar with for all but 12 years is up and out of here, soon to be a thing of the past! Over the coming weeks, our team will transition to creating tiles and curating client feeds to the new aspect ratio.

Instagram goes dark-mode

Another distinct change to expect, Instagram will be entering a ‘dark-mode’ aesthetic to enhance the full-screen content experience. Never fear, if this sounds like a no-go for you, it can be easily changed! Simply head over to the settings menu, and under ‘theme’, the new update can be switched back to ‘light’ mode if that’s more your jam.

More timely stories

Say goodbye to being cut off every 15 seconds when recording a story, in the new update you can expect to record up to 60-second videos. With this, excessive stories uploaded by users will be hidden, allowing the user to choose to tap to ‘see all’. We’ll be looking to incorporate more longer video content into our stories from now.

Auto-generated captions

Just like similar apps, Instagram has finally bitten the bullet and will soon launch their new auto-generated caption feature. We can expect to see auto-generated captions for all video content across the platform, in up to 17 languages. This is great news for those people consuming content in quiet or public places, who are hard of hearing, or just have the sound off, and will make a world of difference as we see Reels continue to dominate the app in the future. 

Feed viewing options

Last but certainly not least, new feed options will be rolled out, giving users three options for viewing - Home, Following and Favourites. Instagram is keeping the ‘Home’ screen as a hub for the current algorithm to continue on, so this will be where you will find a lot of suggested content based on things you like, in the mix of all the current accounts you follow, as per normal.

An exciting addition, for those who love and very much miss the OG-insta days, we’ll be reintroduced to posts in chronological order in our ‘Following’ and ‘Favourites’ tabs. These will be exclusively for accounts you follow, so don’t hang out here for too long if you are a fan of suggested content! 

So, there you have it. A few exciting, and somewhat controversial, updates are to be rolled out on Instagram in 2022. Our prediction, this will essentially be the social platform’s ‘endgame’, offering us and our followers a more immersive, personalised and creative experience on the app. 

It will definitely influence how we create content, with the aspect ratio change having the biggest impact from a graphic design perspective.

More information:

https://embedsocial.com/blog/new-instagram-features/
https://www.tugagency.com/blog/2022/05/24/instagram-has-changed-and-heres-what-you-need-to-know/
https://napoleoncat.com/blog/instagram-new-features-and-updates/ 
https://goss.ie/news/instagram-users-are-not-happy-about-the-apps-latest-update-301814

Cristy Houghton

Cristy's unique career has taken her from country NSW to the city lights of Clarendon Street South Melbourne and back again. With an early career in radio as a copywriter and creative strategist, she is now a Jill of all trades as a graphic designer, website builder, blog writer, video editor, social media manager, marketing strategist and more. 

In fact, give her any task and this chick will figure out how to do it! Go on, we dare you!

No, really, we DARE you!!

Cristy has won two Australian Commercial Radio Awards (ACRAs) for Best Ad and Best Sales Promotion, and even has an 'Employee of the Year' certificate with her name on it.

Cristy and her husband James have traveled extensively through Russia, China and South East Asia, and have two fur-babies, Sooty (cat) and Panda (puppy). Cristy loves drinking coffee, meeting people to drink coffee, coffee tasting and coffee flavoured cocktails. She also enjoys road trips, TED Talks and watching cat videos on youtube.

http://www.embarketing.com.au
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