Instagram Knows You Want It To Be Instagram Again

Instagram knows we're done with it trying to be like TikTok, and says it's doing something about it.

Earlier this week a post by the @illumitati account went viral because it captured people's growing frustrations with the photo-sharing app.

The post, which was shared by Instagram heavyweights including Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian, said: "Make Instagram Instagram Again. Stop trying to be TikTok. I just want to see cute photos of my friends. Sincerely, Everyone."

The post went viral after Instagram tested changes including peppering people's feeds with videos from accounts they don't follow. It also trialled a new feature where the app opened to show full-screen photos and videos: a change that definitely looked like trying to keep up with TikTok.

"I'm glad we took a risk — if we're not failing every once in a while, we're not thinking big enough or bold enough," Instagram boss Adam Mosseri told The Verge. "But we definitely need to take a big step back and regroup. [When] we’ve learned a lot, then we come back with some sort of new idea or iteration. So we're going to work through that."

Mosseri also confirmed that from now on, our feeds won't be inundated with quite so many videos from accounts we don't follow. However, he stopped short of saying Instagram will never sprinkle our feed with videos we never asked to see.

"When you discover something in your field that you didn't follow before, there should be a high bar — it should just be great," Mosseri said. "You should be delighted to see it. And I don't think that’s happening enough right now. So I think we need to take a step back, in terms of the percentage of feed that are recommendations, get better at ranking and recommendations, and then — if and when we do — we can start to grow again."

So, there's no doubt that Instagram is listening to us. It just remains to be seen whether the app is doing enough to remind us why we enjoyed it so much in the first place.