Instagram New Features: Original Content First and More

The success of Instagram rests upon creators, and it’s obvious to the company. In order to support the creators, Instagram implements new features that help creators promote their own content. This implies updates in the algorithm that shows users' recommendations in their feeds, and now the balance is to be shifted towards the originals.

Adam Mosseri in his tweet didn’t shed any more light on how it will function. What we know is that there will be a “ranking for originality”. Probably there will be some sort of AI-assisted comparison that will detect original content and rank it higher for further promotion, so users will see it more often. It does not exclude secondary content totally, but it makes it less probable to pop up in your feed.

To help promote accounts on Instagram, there will also be the Enhanced Tag feature. With an Enhanced Tag, when you see someone tagged on another person or page’s post, you can immediately access their biography (even if the account is friends-only, you will see the open part of the bio). This will let you see quicker whether you are interested in following that account.

Product Tags are a thing to be appreciated by Insta sellers. They enable users to go straight to the page of a certain product, instead of visiting the seller’s or manufacturer’s page. On this page, the product can be bought with minimum effort.

As for the battle for original content, it takes other forms as well. For example, Reels will not let creators simply upload videos from TikTok with its watermark (though using CapCut by TikTok for creating them is still okay). Stills from them are not that much of a concern so far, though they may also carry that watermark.

 What do you think about this new policy? Is original content important for you, or do you care more about its quality than its source? And would you appreciate these new sorts of tags? If you have something to say, you can do it in the comments below!