The social media platform Instagram is playing around with a number of new additions, most notably a full-screen mode for its news feed, which essentially makes it look like a carbon copy of TikTok.
Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri confirmed these new features via his Twitter profile, pointing out that they will make the feed “a new, immersive viewing experience.” In this new mode, photos and videos of the people you choose to follow will appear in a taller and more slender mode compared to the way they do today and will be shown the moment you choose to open the app.
Instagram shared an image of what an upgraded news feed would look like, with photos taking up the entirety of the screen and likes, comments and other features appearing at the top, rather than the bottom where they show up now.
📣 Testing Feed Changes 📣
We’re testing a new, immersive viewing experience in the main Home feed.
If you’re in the test, check it out and let me know what you think. 👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/dmM5RzpicQ
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) May 3, 2022
However everything else will remain as is, with Stories, notifications and messages being available at the top when users open the app and buttons for “Home,” “Search,” “Reels,” “Shop” and “Profile” appearing at the bottom.
This new similarity to TikTok is not a coincidence, as the app has become a thorn on parent company Meta’s side for user attention as mentioned by co-founder Mark Zuckerberg himself during a recent quarterly financial report. With these new changes, Instagram hopes to win back some of the crowd that they’ve lost to the increasingly popular video publishing app and raise their revenues.
Back in April, Instagram also introduced another change to the News Feed which allows users to switch between the posts of those who they are following and those who they have under their “favourites” category.
