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In our discussion during Monday’s class, we talked about what people want to see and what gets them engaged on social media. This correlates with what we had talked about earlier in the term with buying followers, which aren’t always or at all engaging. People care about engaging pictures and short captions–not too much effort. Data analysis is how businesses come up with these stats, which only benefits their social media platforms’ engagement.
We then went into the specifics of what social media platforms are changing in order to achieve more engagement. For instance, the dreaded Snapchat and Instagram update came up and many were eager to state their rage. Snapchat had smooshed stories and conversations into one section instead of separating the two, which for someone like me with OCD, that is a problem. Instagram’s new update somehow made posts appear on your feed out of chronological order and is causing some stalker-like engagement on posts.
Instagram created this update so that the user could see the posts that would interest them the most first. Users feel powerless and are unfamiliar with the change, so they have pushed back and stated their frustration. People miss 70% of their feed due to data pulled, so the company believes that this will solve that problem. Although this has left some users in a frenzy, it is expected to not only help the people view what they are most interested in, but help Instagram grasp the most amount of engagement.
