Instagram, from social media to money media

April 11, 2016

A post by Amaïa DARRIGADE, MSc student in Digital Marketing @KEDGE Business School.

Created at the end of 2010, Instagram has become one of the most popular social networks by users, and it is my favorite. It allows us to share our moods, purchases, outfits, dishes, photographs, short trips… just about everything!

This is a unique photo sharing network on which a true community exists: we can create and interact with it. Instagram offers a real experience for its users: the user can escape the space of a moment in one click, surf from one image to another, from one continent to another, observe the photographs taken by one of a friend in New York, or follow the posts of their favorite blogger… So give yourself a moment of decompression in an active day…

For a long time, Instagram was free of any commercial activity, and only users ruled the roost…But everything changed with the arrival of the giant Facebook !

With over 400 million active users worldwide (including 5.5 million in France) and 80 million photos shared daily, Instagram was finally acquired by Facebook in 2012.

After this acquisition, users were able to see some changes including the emergence of advertising in the form of sponsored images since March 9, 2015. Paid publications of brands appear in users’ news feed even though they did not subscribe to the brands’ feed.

As if that wasn’t enough…Since March 15, 2016, like Google, Instagram has implemented an algorithm. The publications, which, in the past, showed in chronological order, will over time be presented to users based on an algorithm and supposedly, the tastes of users. In other words, Instagram decides to show the publications based on users’ interests rather than on posting time.

There remains a void as to the definition of this algorithm, as Instagram hasn’t revealed anything about it yet.

Many users have already contested this new decision, petitions have also been launched… Some fear that the feed Instagram became the advertising relay major brands and lose the spontaneity that this social network had managed to create.

It seems that the experience offered to the community on Instagram will be upset over the coming months…

Should we believe that Instagram, and behind it, Facebook, will tell us some « good news » in March each year?

To be continued…

Reaction after the announcement on Instagram:

Some reactions on Fortune.com.

A rumor circulated on Instagram as what the algorithm would be implemented from Tuesday, March 29, 2016. Users (famous or not) or brands have called their subscribers to « turn on notifications » to be alerted as soon as a publication will be published.