SEUNGHOON JEONG / HYPEBEAST KR
Majority of social media influencers have always relied on Instagram to make a good amount of money out of likes from their followers through online advertising of various products or brands.
With all this in play, “likes” and followers continued to play an important role in determining the popularity of an Instagram user. In fact, “likes” is what has made Instagram to be referred to as a “popularity contest platform” where people weigh their online dominance by the number of likes their receive in a particular post within a given time.
Various corporates for many years have highly depended on the number of double taps you receive on your posts to gauge your social media popularity before awarding you that contract of promoting their brands online.
But this could soon become a thing of the past if the latest recommendations by Instagram, are taken on board.
According to a Twitter Screenshots of the feature which were first shared sometimes last week by a tech researcher Jane Manchun Wong, Instagram plans to do away with like counts on each and every post shared on its platform.
If fully adopted then we could be staring at a massive career loss for majority Instagram models who have always depended on the ‘god of likes’ to rescue them on their daily doings.
Jane uncovered a new trial that Instead of a numerical like count, the images showed that a few users "and others" had liked a particular post rather than an exact number of likes.
"We want your followers to focus on what you share, not how many likes your posts get," reads an Instagram app screenshot Wong shared." Instagram is testing hiding like count from audiences,
as stated in the app: "We want your followers to focus on what you share, not how many likes your posts get" pic.twitter.com/MN7woHowVN — Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) April 18, 2019 You'd still see a few photos and names of people who liked a post on your feed, but there wouldn't be a number indicating how many people in total liked it, according to the screenshots.
Account owners will still be able to view exact like counts in a separate page only they can see.
"During this test, only the person who shared a post will see the total number of likes it gets."
The idea was revealed by Instagram’s head, Adam Mosseri, on Tuesday, during Facebook’s annual developer conference, F8.
Adam said the experiment is part of a broader effort to change on how Instagram works by creating a more welcoming experience.
"We don't want Instagram to feel like a competition, we want to make it a less pressurized environment," he said.
Instagram further adds that the main reason for this major update test is to have users concentrate on their posts and interacting with the app rather than likes. Many users will delete photos that do not get "enough" likes.
Hiding likes would fundamentally change the way Instagram works, as liking photos and garnering likes is one of the platform's main features.
The feature is currently being tried out in Canada and might be rolled out to the rest of the world soon.