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Instagram CEO On hiding Likes: ‘Make It Less Of A Competition’

Instagram CEO On hiding Likes: ‘Make It Less Of A Competition’

Instagram may be doing away with showing likes. That is if the head of the social media giant Adam Mosseri has his way. 

In an interview with NBC News, Mosseri said Facebook-owned Instagram will be hiding the number of “likes” each post gets. 

Instagram announced it would try out a test of hiding “likes” a way of creating “a less pressurized environment” on the app. Taking away the “likes” will get  rid of completion, said Mosseri.

“The big idea is to try and make Instagram feel less pressurized, to make it less of a competition,” Mosseri said. “So, you can spend a little bit less time worrying about how many likes you have and a little bit more time connecting with people or things that inspire you.”

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Doing so will significantly change the influencer marketing game. “For influencers, or individuals who work with brands to promote services or products on social media, this will likely mean a continued shift away from ‘vanity metrics’ — such as likes or follower counts — and a focus on actual sales,” CNBC reported.

“The goal of Facebook and Instagram is to push users to Stories, since they believe the future is in short form videos, not static images or [the] News Feed,” Social Native founder and CEO David Shadpour said to CNBC. “Because of this, they’re focusing on strategies to increase consumer consumption rate of video, get more creators making videos, and increase ROI of advertisers leveraging video.”

Here’s how the “new” Instagram would work: “Users would still be able to ‘like’ a post, and account owners would still be able to see how many interactions a post received. But the change would remove the public-facing number, leaving users without the context of whether a post has been particularly popular,” NBC News reported.

According to Shadpour, taking away “likes” would give more control to creators.

“By reducing the focus on likes as an indicator of success, creators will have more creative control — focusing on content and transitioning their content towards video,” he said. “With that shift, metrics will also have to shift. Time spent on the platform, engagement, views and other metrics will prevail as KPIs.” He said this will also have the effect of incentivizing more quality content.

Some accounts might already be noticing the test.