You may not have known it from your Instagram feed today, but the social site's new algorithm-based feed isn't going into effect this week.
On Monday, brands and influencers took to posting desperate pleas for followers to turn on notifications so that any time they post a new pic, it shows up in their followers' feeds.
They even commandeered the hashtag #letsstaytogether and provided *helpful* arrows of where users should click to turn on alerts.
It's not that these pleas won't help accounts keep their followers from never seeing their posts again once Insta switches from a chronological to an algorithm-based stream. It's just that the change isn't happening today, tomorrow or even this week.
"We're listening and we assure you nothing is changing with your feed right now," Instagram tweeted when it realized it needed to say something. "We promise to let you know when changes roll out broadly."
Instaspam or wise instaplan?
The spam has gone way up on Instagram today, but I can't blame people and brands for wanting to make sure they stay in followers' feeds once the change goes into effect. All the time and energy it's taken to build their followers could be for naught if Instagram doesn't serve up their posts once it turns on the algorithm.
And it's not like we haven't seen a mass brand freakout over a feed change before: The same thing happened when Facebook switched to an algorithm-based system, too.
For now, you can expect your feed to keep flowing in chronological order. Soon, though, it will switch so the best posts are fed to you.
Some fine-tuning will likely be in order once the new feed takes effect, as it's basically impossible for Instagram to know what users will respond to until this launches more widely.
Until then, enjoy the feed you have. You can always #letsstaytogether with the brands and people you think really deserve it, like, I don't know, techradar.
