Earlier in the month, Instagram revealed plans to change how the feeds of users show posts, moving from chronologically to algorithmically similar to how Facebook does it.
The planned change has riled up some users, who prefer to be shown posts on their feeds in the order that they were uploaded.
Among the things that were caused by Instagram's announcement is the current flood of "turn on notifications" posts on the picture-sharing network, as professional Instagrammers and brands are concerned that they would disappear from the feeds of their users once the planned change is implemented.
The owners of certain Instagram accounts invested a lot of time and effort into growing their number of followers. However, once the planned algorithmic feeds for the service are launched, not all the posts of accounts might be shown to their followers, as they would be screened depending on how well they perform.
Brands and professionals will also not be able to know how many people have viewed their posts, as Instagram currently does not provide analytics tools aside from a view counter for videos. Instagram did say that it is currently developing business tools for content insights, with the tools to be available in the coming months.
This had led to what could be perceived as panic for certain Instagram accounts, leading to the surge of "turn on notifications" posts. Some of these posts even state that the planned changes to the social network are coming as soon as tomorrow.
This is certainly not the case, Instagram said itself on Twitter.
We're listening and we assure you nothing is changing with your feed right now. We promise to let you know when changes roll out broadly.
— Instagram (@instagram) March 28, 2016
A spokesperson for Instagram, looking to douse the flames against the planned change, said that the service is not looking to optimize user feeds only for popularity or performance. In addition to using likes and comments, Instagram will also be taking into consideration timeliness and the relationship between the user and the poster.
Nevertheless, should users turn on notifications for all of the accounts that they are following on Instagram? It all depends on the user. Turning on notifications will inform the user every time that an account has posted a picture on the service, but if the user would do so for several accounts, the notifications could become annoyingly numerous.
