Since its debut in 2010 (6 October, to be precise), Instagram has undergone a number of reinventions and transformations. First, the old logo was kicked to the curb – the classic brown vintage camera replaced with the purple, pink and white design we’re so familiar with now. Then (and bear with me on the timeline here) came the dawn of IGTV, Reels, Instagram Shopping and the controversial Instagram algorithm, all ways to keep our eyes glued to the feed and on the explore page. 

Now, launched just yesterday, Instagram has made a significant change to a key part of the Instagram experience: namely, the number of feeds you have. 

Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri dropped a video explaining the new changes and the reasons behind them. At the core of it, he says there’s a need for users to be able to customise their Instagram experience:

“You should be able to shape Instagram into the experience you want; you know what’s best for you. And to that end, today we’re launching two new feeds on Instagram. One’s called ‘Following’ and the other is called ‘Favourites’. 

“’Following’ is a deterministic feed of posts from accounts you’ve followed in chronological order. Over time, we’ve introduced more recommendations into the main feed because we think it’s important for us to help people discover new things. To learn about content on Instagram they didn’t even know existed but they might enjoy or love. But, we also think it’s important – and we’ve got a lot of feedback – that people have access to a deterministic, chronological feed just from the accounts that they’ve decided to follow. If you see my DMs, we’ve gotten that request a lot, so we’re excited to announce it today.

“The second is called ‘Favourites’. ‘Favourites’ is a way to make sure you don’t miss anything from the accounts that you care about most – and, we’ll share photos and videos from your favourites at the top of the main feed. You can also get to a chronological feed of photos and videos from your favourites as well.

“I want to be clear – the main feed on Instagram is going to continue to be ranked, it’s going to continue to be personalised. We believe in personalisation. We find that when we try and connect people with the content that they’re the most interested in, not only do they say they’re happier with Instagram overall, we also see that the average account reaches 50% more followers than in a chronological feed world.”

So, what does this look like in reality? Well, now, at the top of your “home feed” is a small arrow, situated next to the Instagram logo. Click it and a drop-down menu appears with the two options Mosseri outlined: Following and Favourites. From here you can build up your ‘Favourites’ and the posts you want to see on the curated page. 

Main image: Getty