Instagram’s Newly Redesigned ‘Explore’ Page Puts An Emphasis On IGTV, Shopping & Stories
Photo: Instagram
Instagram once again is updating the Explore page.
In a recent blog post, the Facebook-owned company announced that it is bringing more ways for users “to discover photos, videos, products, and Stories" in Explore, which it says is visited by more than 50% of users on Instagram every month.
More Immersive Experiences For IGTV & Shopping
Photo: Instagram
Explore has a newly redesigned navigation bar that features pinned shortcuts to IGTV and Shopping at the front of the bar, followed by topic channels like Travel, Food, Art, Sports, TV & Movies, and Animals. The order of these channels are based on your interests.
The IGTV and Shopping channels also feature much more immersive experiences. The IGTV channel consists of personalized videos from users that you're already following as well as users that the app thinks you may want to follow based on your past behavior. On the other hand, the Shopping channel is made up of shoppable posts equipped with the fairly new Checkout feature and a navigation bar featuring category filters like Beauty, Clothing, and Home Decor, which allow you to easily browse specific types of products.
Stories now available in Explore
Photo: Instagram
For the first time ever, Stories content will show up in the Explore page. Similar to in-feed posts, you will now see personalized recommendations for Stories.
According to a statement by an Instagram spokesperson to TechCrunch, whether or whether not a user’s Stories show up in Explore will depend on several factors:
- Videos have the potential to be ranked higher than photos since videos auto-play in Explore and tend to get more attention, but great photos will still rank above mediocre videos
- Highly-visual Stories that don’t include too much text will get preference
- Stories with content more similar to and representative of a creator’s typical feed posts are more likely to show up on Explore
- Certain content types like reposts of other people’s feed posts are demoted by the algorithm
- Computer vision that detects what the actual content of a Story is helps Instagram show you ones similar to the content you interact with most, though this is a weaker signal than those above.
Redesigning the Explore page again shows Instagram’s full dedication to IGTV, Shopping, and Stories. It previously indicated these being areas of focus at one point or another, but its latest revamp to Explore makes its very clear and puts its effort on full display.
While Shopping and Stories have been embraced by users of all types and likely will only get bigger, IGTV is still far behind and not catching on with users as many thought it would when it was first announced.
Will making IGTV a bigger part of Explore help? Maybe a little. But, it certainly isn’t enough. Instagram will need to continue to build out its vertical video offering and try new ways to market it to 500 million daily users.
In other Instagram news, it recently launched a new @shop account that falls in line with its e-commerce initiatives.
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SOURCE: Instagram Press
