Instagram has found a new way to keep you hooked: By making your feed infinite. The photo app today introduces a new feature of new suggestions for messages that will automatically deliver new content when you are ready by scrolling your feed. Notably, Instagram added the suggestion messages to the “You’ve all been notified” section, which appears after viewing all of your feed updates. That was introduced two years ago as an anti-addiction measure, but it seems like the need to compete with Tiktok’s ever-improving algorithm is the current concern for Instagram.
The new proposed posts will of course be a combination of automated recommendations and advertisements. Robby Stein, Instagram’s product director, tells TechCrunch that the feature is a response to seeing users search for more posts once they reach the end of their feed. But it is difficult not to draw a direct line to Tikto. The feed learns what you want over time and serves new videos directly to you, without the need to follow one. That has made it particularly addictive, as many users are sitting at home, and it has left Instagram scrambling to find a way to compete. And at this point, it does not seem that Reels needs the Tiktok killer Instagram.
