Instagram, like Facebook, is getting real serious about video. That shouldn’t be a surprise though, considering Instagram is owned by Facebook. Recently, Instagram announced that they were extending videos to a full minute. This was after that change was made for ads. The feature has already rolled out across Android and iOS, and is sure to gain more exposure and interaction from users. Now, the company has announced a change to the Explore page. The Explore page within the Instagram app would show you posts that are similar to ones that you’ve “liked”. It also shows you the trending hashtags and gives you the ability to search for items in Instagram.
However that’s changing today. Instagram is debuting a personalized video feed for Instagram. It’s available in the v7.20 update for both iOS and Android. Instagram will show you a personalized channel called “Videos You Might Like”, and what this does is it shows you videos from across the platform and puts it into a seamless video viewing experience. In the Explore grid, you will also find “Featured” channels. These are videos for specific topics. Now Instagram didn’t mention this, but this is likely going to give them another advertising avenue. Where companies could promote certain “featured” topics, like they can with hashtags on Twitter.
Explore is still working the same way as it always has. Giving you more and more posts from people you don’t follow, but may find interesting. This is all an attempt to keep people on the site longer. Remember, that if you see something in the Explore page that you don’t want to see, just tap on the three dots icon and tap “See Fewer Posts Like This”, and you’ll see fewer posts in relation to that one. Doing this is going to make your experience with Explore that much better.
Instagram says that this update to Explore is only visible in the US. However they do note that it’ll be coming to the rest of the world in the near future. You can see the changes in the updated Instagram app which is rolling out to Google Play and the Apple App Store today.