Instagram is expanding its feed today with the launch of “suggested posts.” These posts, from accounts you don’t follow, will show up after you’ve reached the end of your feed and give you the option to keep scrolling with Instagram’s suggestions. Up until now, the feed has been entirely determined by users’ preferences and the people they follow.
Instagram is adding the suggests posts after its “You’re all caught up notice,” which pops up after viewing all of your feed updates. That was introduced two years ago as an anti-addiction measure, but it seems like the need to compete with Tiktok’s ever-improving algorithm is the more pressing concern for Instagram today.
The suggested posts won’t be the same ones that show up in Explore. They’ll be related to the content that people already follow, whereas Explore aims to point people toward adjacent content, says Julian Gutman, head of product at Instagram Home. He used space content, which he follows and engages with on his feed regularly, as an example. A suggested post might be a new space photo from someone he doesn’t follow, whereas his Explore page might contain posts related to physics more broadly.
Its feed learns what you like over time and serves new videos to you directly, without the need to follow anyone. That’s made it a particularly addictive as many users are stuck at home, and it’s left Instagram scrambling to find a way to compete. And at this point, it doesn’t seem like Reels is the Tiktok killer Instagram needs.
