Case study – Instagram custom feed
Oct 27, 2019
Do check the case study – Sudden shift from Facebook to Instagram.
Scrolling through Instagram can be time-consuming when you follow hundreds or thousands of accounts. This may feel unproductive if most of the content is not important to you at the time. Due to the loaded content, its common to miss few important feeds from your family, friends and relatives.
In this case study, we will focus on betterment of the feed section.
Okay, before going to the solution section, its important to understand how user post content. because the solution might overlap with the present camera section. So i asked the same 25 members from my whatsapp group.
How do they post images?
Do you take pic from Instagram app itself or do you take pic from default camera,edit and post.
Instagram app: 9 members
Default mobile: 16 members
9 of the 25 members use Instagram app, to capture image, edit and share.
16 of the 25 members use default mobile camera, edit and than post it on Instagram.
Interesting fact was, all 9 members who use Instagram app to take pics were female & and 16 members use default mobile camera app were male users. Quantitative data might differ.
The next question to those 9 members was about,
Where do you click to access camera?
All 9 members answer was same:
Top left CAMERA icon for taking a pic, edit and post.
Bottom menu, 3rd button to post older pics or videos.
I am not sure if that’s true or not, but as per the data i have collected, very less users know about another way to access camera, that is: just the left swipe from feed screen.
As per the data i have got, users who use camera feature do not use left swipe to access camera, the question is can we use the left swipe to customize our feed section?
While adding a new feature or product to an existing B2C product with huge number of users is definitely not so easy. And when we talk about feed customization, it gets tricky. Instagram makes money by selling advertisements. People can pay money for Instagram posts or Instagram stories to be placed in front of people who otherwise wouldn’t see those posts or stories, much like Facebook ads
Which means, giving access to users for feed customization might directly effect Instagram revenue.
So, how can we plan custom feed and still not effect Instagram revenue?
A/B testing and beta launch for innovators and early adopters.
While user is in feed section, user swipes from left side.
Custom feed section settings will appear.
Here, users can create a “New Group” by clicking New Group on top right side of the screen.
Users, can long press a group and arrange the priority by swapping up or down.
Three groups will be available as default, that is – Family, chat buddies and commented by me.
Family Group:
This group will be empty.
Users can add their family and relatives by a simple click, which opens a new screen where users can search and add one or more profile.
As a user, I can click on Add Participants to add profile and save it.
Chat Buddies:
This group will have profiles with users whom i have chatted.
Condition:
Only those profile will be listed where both the users have chatted at least once.
(We can also use different conditions, like users should have chatted at least once in 2 days)
Chatting at least once make more sense, from product perspective.
Commented by me:
Few users might love following comments so that they wont miss the reply’s.
We can have some conditions like, expiry time (After my first comment, it will stay notified for 24/48 hours. I believe data can help understand the conditions to apply)
As a user, I can create New Group, add participants, select single or multiple profile and click NEXT.
I can than add a “Group Name” and click “Create” to create the group.
This doesn’t mean Instagram should not show advertisement, because that’s one way Instagram makes money. Using advertisement data we can try to know the present adv interval and try to implement the same.
This case study of introducing custom feed section can help users for managing privacy.
Stay tuned, I will be discussing it on my next post.