Instagram Is Focusing on Reels, Users Are Disappointed
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms that people today love to spend time on. However, if you have been keeping up with it recently, you must have noticed it has introduced many changes over a relatively short period. But the latest update has turned out to be a disaster (we guess it is safe to say so considering the outrage among users) as it hints that the platform is shifting its focus towards the “Reels” feature, which has disappointed its loyal users.
If you have logged in to your Instagram account over the last few days, you must have observed a teeny-tiny but significant change in the user interface.
Well, if you remember, a few months ago, Instagram replaced the “Explore” button with “Reels” and shifted the former at the top of the screen beside the direct message icon. This change caused quite a discomfort as users would habitually click on the button that earlier opened their explore feed only to find reels videos there.
A similar change has been introduced with the latest update where Instagram has replaced the “Create” button (the plus icon) with the “Reels” button and the ‘Activity” tab (the heart icon) with the “Shop” tab on the bottom navbar. Users can now find the create button and activity tab on their screen’s top right-hand side beside the direct message button.
Whether Instagram has done this deliberately or not, giving the “Reels” a center position on its navigation bar gives the users a hint that the platform is now giving more priority to Reels and Shopping than the main feed content. As one can figure it out, users are not really delighted with this, and you can see how furious they are through their online posts and tweets.
Instagram’s Take on This New Update
With its recent announcement about the update, Instagram asserts that the way youngsters and content creators of this generation are using the platform is transforming. The number of short videos posted across the platform has skyrocketed, and also there has been a tremendous shift towards online shopping ever since the pandemic hit the world.
On this new addition of the reels tab, Instagram believes that it offers a type of global stage to the content creators for sharing their art and work with the rest of the world and have an opportunity to break out and discover an audience.
However, if truth be told, this Reels feature is actually competing with the famous TikTok platform directly, and Instagram is hyping it just like it hyped the “Stories” feature, which was also copied from another popular social media platform, Snapchat.
But unlike Instagram Stories, Reels is not resonating with the platform’s loyal users, which is why the app is pouring all the more efforts and going the extra mile by actually placing the tab front and center.
Replacing the “Create” tab with the “Reels” feature is certainly a risk, although the company believes that not introducing such changes will be an even bigger risk to the platform’s future.
Moreover, Instagram further said that they don’t bring these changes without giving it a good deal of consideration. Plus, it’s been a while since the platform has made any significant changes to its home screen. The way people create content and enjoy social media has significantly changed. Instagram believes that the greatest risk to its platform is not that it changes too often, but that it doesn’t change fast enough and becomes irrelevant to the audience.
While the company seems quite excited about this new update, its user base does not seem to have mutual feelings.
In fact, the audience seems to be so furious on Instagram that they took to various platforms, including Twitter, to share their hard feelings. Not just the regular Instagram users but even influencers with millions of followers have shown their disappointment (only to a level that allows them to work on it safely) about this latest update.
This rage isn’t just among a group of users; it seems consistent across the platform. Users believe that Instagram is not mending things that the audience sees as broken; instead, it is bringing in new things that nobody even asked for.
Conclusion
Taking all this into consideration, it is crystal-clear that all Instagram users want a simple and easy to use platform that they can easily navigate and an algorithm that shows them the content they are truly interested to see.
Clearly, users don’t care about watching the Reels videos or shopping via Instagram; that’s not why they open the app. However, only time can tell whether or not the platform is able to make a shift in the user behavior, whether the users will be sold on this Reels feature, or the app will be forced to go back to its former version.
As of now, we can’t say anything for sure. But we will definitely find out a lot about the impact this new update is having on the users once Instagram’s next quarterly report is published.