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when instagram launched back in 2010, no one knew the extent to which it would rise in popularity. today, instagram has overhauled the meaning of influential marketing to the point that it is a key consideration in many a brand’s marketing campaigns. and to that effect, instagram’s metrics have been key to its business end, whether it’s social media influencers or a brand presence.
but now we hear that instagram is doing away with one of those key metrics. (that’s insanity! or is it?) although instagram’s new likes-hiding experiment has been critically received, it has also been praised to be a step in the right direction. so then, which is it?
instagram began testing a new feature in canada that would hide public like counts on all photo and video posts. after initial testing in canada, the update rolled out to several more countries, including australia, brazil, ireland, italy, japan, and new zealand.
while users may still see the number of likes their own posts have accumulated, they will no longer be able to see the “like metric” of other posts. director of policy for facebook australia and new zealand, mia garlick, says that the change was made with the intention of freeing instagram users from judgment and helping people to focus “less on likes and more on telling their story”.
“as you scroll through your feed, there are no like counts,” explained mark zuckerberg at the 2019 facebook developer conference. “you can see who liked a photo or video, you can tap through to see the list, and if you have the time you can add them all up yourself.”
in 2017, the uk’s royal society for public health published a report indicating that while instagram appeared to provide a positive outlet for self-expression, it was shown to have a negative impact on sleep, body image and induced fear of missing out. a significant amount of instagram users have emphasised their hopes of the deconstruction of influencer culture on instagram, reverting it to the wholesome roots of simply sharing photos of everyday life with family and social circles.
thanks to recently being in the limelight for negative influence on the mental health of preteens and children in general, facebook seems to have accelerated rolling out policies to tackle such issues. the new like-hiding initiative is a push in the direction towards positive influence on mental health.
the question of the hour, however, is: how will this affect instagram influencers and businesses?
despite criticism, experts suggest that the change will be primarily positive. instagram stories never had any publicly available metric, yet that didn’t stop it from becoming extremely popular among users. with the distraction of the like count done away with, more focus will be given to content and its quality. the mental stress of constantly checking numbers and metrics and comparing them to other influencers would be done away with as well. posting can be done more freely now as well without time limitations for better engagement.
a major concern is that in 2019, brands are not interested in followers, rather interested in an influencers’ engagement metrics. to which end, roxy jacenko, director of ministry of talent, a sydney-based agency that manages social media stars, suggests that influencers needn’t worry too much about the change as the reporting and analytics features are still available in the back end of profiles for users with business accounts.
it has become a recent practice in instagram collaborations between brands and influencer where brands ask for the background metric data, post an influencer conducting a campaign for the brand. this practice could be more forefront now.
the fact of the matter, however, is that “likes”, when it comes to influential marketing, are only justified by a commercial gain for the brand. even if said influencer received a high amount of likes for a post, and the product in the post doesn’t even see a dent in sales… ultimately a lot more variables went wrong there despite the number of likes. so notwithstanding that metric, would you call that a successful social media campaign anyway?