Instagram is giving users another way to display their interests and connect with like-minded users via a new display of topics on user profiles.
As shown in this image posted by app researcher Radu Oncescu, Instagram’s new interests option enables users to add up to five topics of interest to their profile, which can help show profile visitors the types of content a user is into at any given time.
Interests will also influence the content the user sees, similar to Instagram’s Your Algorithm control option.
The main purpose is seemingly to facilitate connection among like-minded users by offering a list of possible common-interest topics to help drive more interest.
Instagram has experimented with similar displays before. Last year, IG tested another interest option called “Picks,” which would enable users to highlight things that they’re interested in via their inbox Notes.
Threads, which remains tangentially connected to IG, has also tried out the exact same display of interests on user profiles.
Conceptually, that could help to facilitate more connection in-stream, with Instagram looking for more ways to maintain user interaction, as opposed to leaning too far into just entertainment.
Because if Instagram becomes all Reels all the time, it loses some of its social juice, which could make it a less compelling, and more easily supplanted app, assuming another competitor beats it on the content front.
For many users, TikTok already has. That said, Instagram remains a key platform for connection, and for maintaining links to profiles of interest, in addition to Reels clips.
Maybe, by showcasing interests, that will help to expand the IG community, which could also lead to more users uploading their own content to the app.
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