Instagram made all its users lose their minds in the holy holidays week, when it rolled out a major update which changed the way people interact with the app. The new update brought the horizontal swiping feature present on its Stories to ordinary Instagram feed. And like most updates by Instagram, even this update was met with strong disapproval and sharp criticism.
The new feature saw the up-down scrolling feature which everyone got accustomed to over the years, be replaced a horizontal swipe/tap feature. This, however, wasn’t a permanent update but rather a feature still in its testing phase.
“Due to a bug, some users saw a change to the way their feed appears today. We quickly fixed the issue and feed is back to normal. We apologize for any confusion.”
Instagram, via Twitter
Instagram Head, Adam Mosseri also took to Twitter to calm people down and answer their questions. He apologized saying this feature was supposed to be tested on very few users but instead went to a broader number of people by accident. Instagram quickly reverted its application back to its original state within 20 minutes. Clearly, the “accident” was more of a user feedback on a feature yet to be rolled out, and will work as more of a happy accident for the company.
Veteran users definitely did not take kindly to this update. Twitter and Instagram were filled with outrage posts and memes in a matter of minutes. Most of them even chided the company for focusing on unimportant stuff instead of working on sorting user’s feed in chronological order – something its users have been asking for a very long time, and is yet to feature even in company’s dev cycle.
The update was obviously a planned public roll out. Why was it done ? Well perhaps the company planned to cash in on the popularity of this feature on Insta Stories, which blew past its rival SnapChat and doubled in user base. It isn’t clear though as to what purpose this update would have solved. Nevertheless, with this user backlash, Instagram might likely hold off rolling out this update to everyone on a permanent basis for a while and work out its kinks.
