J
Jeff Causey
Guest
Embedding curated feeds within social media platforms seems to be all the rage these days. Recently Twitter launched both their Moments option and the advertiser driven Promoted Moments as a way to keep users within their app while delivery a more concentrated source of content to users. In a bit of a surprise move, Instagram revealed on Halloween they have their own take on a curated feed ready for users.
If you happened to open Instagram on Halloween, a holiday especially well-suited to a platform focusing on sharing photos, you probably noticed the new curated content option as its availability was front and center on the homepage. Instagram merely invited users to “Watch Halloween’s Best Videos” so it is unclear whether a snappy name has been given to the new feature.
The video channel was available for 24-hours starting at 1 pm on Saturday and showcased the best Halloween videos that Instagram’s staff of curators could locate. The internal effort was headed up by Amanda Kelso, a community director for Instagram, who led a staff of a half dozen team members who pored through user posts to find content for the feed.
Although the feed revealed on Halloween showed how Instagram can capitalize on an event by providing a high entertainment value – after all, what better way to spend a few minutes than watching videos of costumed candy collectors – it also shows how Instagram can get in on the news cycle. Instagram hopes to challenge Twitter as the source for breaking news as revealed by users posting to the platforms. Just like Twitter is working on features like Moments to help users discover trending information, the best videos feature on Instagram can do the same thing.
Instagram is on the look out for more events to feature on the new video channel. Reportedly there are no plans to make the feature available to advertisers ala Twitter’s Promoted Moments.
source: Wired
Come comment on this article: Instagram unmasks new curated feed on Halloween
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