There are reports that Instagram has included a new “Recommended for You” feature in its app after adding support for following hashtags earlier this month.
According to the reports last week, Instagram revealed that that it was testing the new feature, which displays posts that your friends have liked, which the social network thinks you may like, or the ones that the company’s algorithm has picked out to show you in your regular feed.
An Instagram spokesperson stated that the recommended posts will only be displayed as soon as you have already seen all the new posts from people you actually follow, but the posts which come from accounts that users aren’t already following are likely to be debatable, particularly keeping in mind the negative reaction that followed when the company introduced an algorithmic feed last year.
“Recommended for You” is being distributed among a few selected Instagram users over recent days, but the company has officially admitted the feature in a new Help document today. Instagram explains that what appears in this section is based on posts liked by the other accounts you follow.
Instagram also made it easier to identify those posts are recommendations in your feed, and this they did by adding a “Recommended for You” line under each post. Reports also state that the “Recommended for You” section is well labeled so as not to confuse users with their own home feed. It is also reported to contain about three to five posts.
You can “temporarily” hide recommended posts by clicking on the three dots next to that post, however, it does not permanently remove all suggested posts from your feed and Instagram is imprecise with regards to the extent of the hide feature.
The inclusion of recommended content is somewhat of a big change for Instagram’s feed or perhaps one of the largest since it switched from the chronological feed to the algorithmic one, or the introduction of ads.
It means that users scrolling through their home feed will no longer see only the posts from accounts they directly follow alongside the ads, they will also see things from their wider network too.
