Anyone who’s been on social media for too long remembers the golden age of Instagram — that is, pre-2016, when your feed followed a simple, chronological timeline. That changed four years back, when top brass dramatically changed their algorithm, resulting in a mixed-up order based on your interactions with other users, timing, and other factors. Well, that may be coming back. Possibly. Or possibly not.
USA Today picked up a post by developer Jane Manchun Wong, whose job is to reverse-engineer apps. She noticed a special feature on the photo-sharing app that was being shared internally, one that allows users to see “latest posts,” which then takes them to a new wing of the service that offers just that.
Instagram is working on “Latest Posts” feed for catching up feed posts
This sounds like the chronological feed people are asking for. Similar, but not the same 👀 pic.twitter.com/AUMwlZGtUr
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) February 14, 2020
Two things, though. One, this won’t take everyone back to the OG Instagram. “Similar, but not the same,” Wong noted in her tweet, and the current version of Instagram will remain the same. Two, this is all an internal test, as part of a recent “hackathon” done by parent company Facebook. Alexandru Voica, who works at Facebook, was the one to shoot down everyone’s hopes, writing, “It is not available to anyone publicly, and we have no plans to test or launch it at this time.”
Another great find, thanks for sharing it. For those who are keen to know how this was developed, it's an early prototype from a recent hackathon (a Facebook tradition). It is not available to anyone publicly, and we have no plans to test or launch it at this time. https://t.co/PMi2QVchLG
— Alexandru Voica 💀 (@alexvoica) February 14, 2020
Still, that could change. If so, people who only signed up with the photo-sharing service within the last few years will get a taste of what those of us Instagram dinosaurs experienced in a much, much simpler time.
(Via USA Today)