In a time where we are becoming more addicted to using the internet and possess that ‘fear of missing out’ on information posted on social media, we must now spend a considerable amount of time scrolling through our news feeds on various social media sites.
Think about the time you spend scrolling through Facebook, before moving on to scroll through Twitter, and then onto Instagram and so on until you’ve run out of platforms and start the cycle all over again.
This may become a thing of the past though, as photo-centred platform Instagram has begun to test a new way to scroll through posts. The company is currently looking at testing a tap-through method for its main feed, in a similar way to the Storyboard feature at the top of the app.
The way this works with Instagram Stories is a user selects a story to view, then when that appears, the user can tap it and it will move onto the next one in a continuous cycle until there is no fresh content to see. They are then taken back to the news feed, where users can click and watch the whole lot again if they wish.
According to Instagram, tapping your way through posts is supposed to be a way to eliminate the boring and tedious experience of scrolling while displaying the entirety of a new post influx in one tap.
The test is being conducted in the Explore section of the app and the company has no immediate plans to implement it into the main feed until it has made a decision on whether the test is successful and received feedback from users taking part in the test. Furthermore, it is not known how wide the test sample being used is.
An Instagram user screenshotted the feature and posted it to Twitter under his handle Suprateek Bose, which has been designed as a quicker way to move through the Explore tab.
https://twitter.com/SupraBo_/status/1050449686547447808
The Explore tab is usually a collection of posts that the site’s algorithms determine is relevant to the user, including some from accounts they do not follow or interact with.
With a double tap on a regular post used as a different way to like a photo or video on the platform, the ‘tap to move on’ feature could see a lot of accidental likes being distributed by many users should it be rolled out worldwide, potentially creating some awkward social situations.
What do you think – would you prefer to scroll or tap your way through your social media sites?
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