The party seems to be over for creators on Instagram’s Threads app. In a surprise announcement, Adam Mosseri revealed that the app’s vaunted algorithm is getting a major overhaul – and it’s not great news for anyone trying to grow an audience outside their existing followers.
Mosseri said Instagram is “rebalancing ranking to prioritize content from people you follow.” In other words, you’re going to see a lot less of the recommended, unconnected content that was a key selling point of Threads in the first place. Instead, your feed will be dominated by posts from accounts you already follow.
Now, that may be great news if you’re just using Threads to keep up with your friends and family. But if you’re a creator, small business, or anyone else trying to reach new audiences? Oof, this is a tough blow.
Just last month, we heard Meta’s Dan Biddle waxing poetic about how powerful Threads’ discovery features were, saying that 30-80% of people’s content was being seen by users who didn’t already follow them. “It’s incredibly powerful,” Biddle said.
But apparently, Instagram has decided that maybe that was a little too powerful. Mosseri acknowledged the change will mean “unconnected reach goes down and connected reach goes up” for creators.
“This is a work in progress – balancing the ability to reach followers and overall engagement is tricky,” Mosseri said, in what feels like the understatement of the year.
Tricky indeed. Because on one hand it’s true- people do want to see more of the content from accounts they actually care about. No one wants their feed to be a constant stream of random, unconnected posts.
But the whole point of a platform like Threads was to help users discover new, fresh content and accounts beyond their existing social circles. Taking that discovery element away seems to undermine what made Threads unique in the first place.
It’s a tough line to walk, for sure. But Instagram seems to have decided that prioritizing engagement and interactions within a user’s existing network is more important than fueling viral growth and discovery for creators.
