If you’re familiar with Instagram, you know there’s your regular home page, where you see updated posts of those you follow. Then, there’s the search tab, where you’re exposed to a whole world of instagramers. A place where your goals and ambitions either diminish or bloom after witnessing how so many people live such seamlessly perfect lives. Well, now you can partake in even more heart wrenching disappointment about your current life, as instagram will soon introduce stories of users you are recommended to follow, to be placed in a bar on the top of the search page. Similarly to the images found on your search tab, recommended stories will be based on who you follow and the topics you care about. Instagram will start showing a few users a bar of Stories from accounts they could follow, with the feature rolling out to everyone else later on.
These suggested stories are bound to get popular, because instagram’s search tab is a favorite go to for users throughout the world. Approximately one fifth of Instagram’s 500 million monthly users, and one third of the app’s daily activities are focused on the search tab, in simple terms, roughly 100 million people visit the search page daily.
Users who Instagram thinks are cool, will just continue getting cooler as more followers pour into their profiles. Stories tend to scream for attention, considering that they’re first thing you see. This will be an automatic gold mine for users whose profiles are suggested, and about half of the time, these tend to be users with 10k plus followers. Sometimes when a random user likes my photos, I wonder if they found my image on the search tab and followed it back to my profile. I ponder on how many times that happens, probably not so many, considering I’m no Kardarshian. However, the number of followers I have isn’t too shabby, and if you’re curious you can check me out here.
Instagram’s Director of Product Management gives a few ideas as to why people love the search tab, “Some seek it out as the primary way they use Instagram…Some people view it as a dessert.”
Instagram in some cases can be incredibly entertaining and even addictive. It encourages and unleashes a stalking spirit seen in all of us that was first molded on Facebook. The search tab helps people keep their feed fresh with new accounts.