If you’re on Instagram, you may have noticed the mass posts that flood your timeline on March 28 from people you follow telling you to “turn on post notifications.”
Or maybe you updated Snapchat and noticed how users’ stories now seamlessly change from one to the next without you having to tap on the screen in order to view a different one.
No matter what the case, social media has unveiled some changes in the past few weeks and the general reaction is… mixed.
“We’re listening and we assure you nothing is changing with your feed right now. We promise to let you know when changes roll out broadly,” Instagram tweeted on the day of the Push Notifications Apocalypse.
This tweet effectively shut down the seemingly endless posts from users who didn’t want to get lost on their followers’ timelines.
But still, changes happened.
“What the f**k with Instagram’s new algorithm? I hate it,” Emma Caulfield tweeted a few days after Instagram evolved.
Users began to see posts not in chronological order, the way so many were used to.
“I feel like I’m missing a lot,” senior communications major Jenna Leigh said. “It’s all out of whack.”
“It blocks out the casual users,” senior economics major Zach Fawaz added. “They should try to make refinements around the viewing experience rather than focusing on the larger people.”
On March 19, before all the talk about algorithms (a.k.a. the reason posts show up in a specific order on your timeline), Instagram tweeted a blog post announcing an upcoming change to minute-long videos.
“We want to bring you fun, flexible and creative ways to create and watch video on Instagram,” the post says. “As part of our continued commitment, you’ll soon have the flexibility to tell your story in up to 60 seconds of video. This is one step of many you’ll see this year.”
According to the post, the time users spent watching videos increased by more than 40 percent in the last six months.
In addition to longer video, version 7.20, allows users to combine several video clips into one video.
“I kind of think the 60-second video is too much,” Leigh said. “The 15-seconds was very them.”
In addition, Snapchat has also unveiled a few changes including a redesigned chat and “auto-advance stories.”
“People will end up looking at more stories,” Fawaz said. “I end up looking at stories I don’t care about.”
“I could do without tapping on one story and forgetting about it then coming back to find it went through all the stories,” Leigh said.
Other users took to Twitter to share their reactions including this tweet by @ImogenWeekender:
There will always be those who like and dislike updates to social media, but it’s safe to say users shouldn’t expect the changes to stop anytime soon.