Instagram Working on 'You're All Caught Up' Feature to Let You Know When All New Posts Have Been Viewed

Monday May 21, 2018 5:00 PM PDT by Juli Clover
Instagram has not used a chronological feed for years now, making it difficult to determine when you've seen all of the new content on the social network.

Instagram may be planning to fix this issue with a new "You're All Caught Up" feature that's designed to notify users when all unseen posts from the last 48 hours have been viewed.


The feature was first noticed by TechCrunch, and an Instagram spokesperson confirmed that it is being tested and will show up for a limited number of users.

Instagram did not, however, share details on how it works and whether it includes every single post from the people you follow or just the best ones that its algorithm has decided to display.

The new "You're All Caught Up" text is part of Instagram's pledge to offer a Usage Insights feature that will let users know just how much time they're spending in the Instagram app.

"We're building tools that will help the IG community know more about the time they spend on Instagram - any time should be positive and intentional. Understanding how time online impacts people is important, and it's the responsibility of all companies to be honest about this. We want to be part of the solution. I take that responsibility seriously," Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom wrote on Twitter last week.

Tag: Instagram
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djbuddha
19 months ago
OR... they could just put it back in chronological order (or even have a switch for that purpose).

But then again, why would any corporation want to listen to user feedback. I mean- NOBODY wants chronological order, right? o_O
Rating: 10 Votes
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OldSchoolMacGuy
19 months ago

As MacGuy rightly suggests ...

Why would they just not reinstate a chronological feed for those of use that want it? Just a tick box to let us have a little more control.



Because Instagram/Facebook has data that shows that isn't good for users. The average Facebook user would have more than 1500 posts in their feed a day (and that was 3 years ago). No one can look at that much. What's why they have to surface the best posts using an algorithm.

They have piles of data showing that giving people a chronological feed, even when they think they want it, actually causes them to engage LESS. They get burnt out by 1000 posts by the same 2 people and don't bother to look at as much, don't engage as much, and don't come back as often. As much as you think you want that, the data proves you're wrong.

The data also shows that people are engaging more with the current setup. Despite what you believe, everything shows people like the current setup more than the old and giving them the option of the old one has no benefit for these social networks.
Rating: 4 Votes
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C DM
19 months ago

Just give us the option for chronological order. Hell even Facebook has the option for "most recent" :mad:

Bingo. Seems like they are solving the problem by coming up with various semi-related workarounds while avoiding the actual solution of providing that simple option.
Rating: 3 Votes
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iZac
19 months ago
As MacGuy rightly suggests ...

Why would they just not reinstate a chronological feed for those of use that want it? Just a tick box to let us have a little more control.
Rating: 3 Votes
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tzm41
19 months ago
This feature is the materialization of the FOMO syndrome. The urge to "catch up" with every single post on your social media feed is a bit insane.
Rating: 2 Votes
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ignatius345
19 months ago

Because Instagram/Facebook has data that shows that isn't good for users. The average Facebook user would have more than 1500 posts in their feed a day (and that was 3 years ago). No one can look at that much. What's why they have to surface the best posts using an algorithm.

They have piles of data showing that giving people a chronological feed, even when they think they want it, actually causes them to engage LESS. They get burnt out by 1000 posts by the same 2 people and don't bother to look at as much, don't engage as much, and don't come back as often. As much as you think you want that, the data proves you're wrong.

The data also shows that people are engaging more with the current setup. Despite what you believe, everything shows people like the current setup more than the old and giving them the option of the old one has no benefit for these social networks.


I, for one, am very very tired of tech companies (and their apologists) telling me what's good for me. I think a lot of us don't give half a crap what the "data shows" and just want to see things in order instead of having another damned algorithm choose for us.

While you're sitting here telling me it's "better for me" to just let the nice machine sort things, I'm looking at 3 day-old posts from the same 10% of the people I follow placed above hour-old posts from others. And I don't buy for a second that this has any purpose but to keep my eyeballs in the app for as long as possible as I scroll and scroll hoping to make some sense of what order they're deigning to show me posts in. Enough.
Rating: 2 Votes
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ike1707
19 months ago
What an ironic day for me to delete my IG account
Rating: 2 Votes
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C DM
19 months ago

Because Instagram/Facebook has data that shows that isn't good for users. The average Facebook user would have more than 1500 posts in their feed a day (and that was 3 years ago). No one can look at that much. What's why they have to surface the best posts using an algorithm.

They have piles of data showing that giving people a chronological feed, even when they think they want it, actually causes them to engage LESS. They get burnt out by 1000 posts by the same 2 people and don't bother to look at as much, don't engage as much, and don't come back as often. As much as you think you want that, the data proves you're wrong.

The data also shows that people are engaging more with the current setup. Despite what you believe, everything shows people like the current setup more than the old and giving them the option of the old one has no benefit for these social networks.

And yet Facebook has offered and continues offer an option to look at posts chronologically if the user elects to do so.
[doublepost=1526964820][/doublepost]

Even though I argue for chronological order (as I wrote above). I can't argue this point at all. Very well put.

Sure you can. Average by far doesn't represent even the majority, it's just a statistical calculation that doesn't necessarily mean much one way or another for many many users. But, more importantly, even with all that, Facebook still offers an option to sort the feed chronologically to this day.[doublepost=1526964820][/doublepost]

While you're sitting here telling me it's "better for me" to just let the nice machine sort things, I'm looking at 3 day-old posts from the same 10% of the people I follow placed above hour-old posts from others. And I don't buy for a second that this has any purpose but to keep me scrolling and keep my eyeballs in the app for as long as possible as I scroll and scroll hoping to make some sense of what order they're deigning to show me posts in. Enough.

And that describes it all rather well.
Rating: 2 Votes
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PsyOpWarlord
19 months ago

Because Instagram/Facebook has data that shows that isn't good for users. The average Facebook user would have more than 1500 posts in their feed a day (and that was 3 years ago). No one can look at that much. What's why they have to surface the best posts using an algorithm.

They have piles of data showing that giving people a chronological feed, even when they think they want it, actually causes them to engage LESS. They get burnt out by 1000 posts by the same 2 people and don't bother to look at as much, don't engage as much, and don't come back as often. As much as you think you want that, the data proves you're wrong.

The data also shows that people are engaging more with the current setup. Despite what you believe, everything shows people like the current setup more than the old and giving them the option of the old one has no benefit for these social networks.


Not sure about Instagram but on Facebook, this is really an issue because Facebook forces you to look at all those Like, Share, and Game post on your main news feed. If they had separate tabs it wouldn't be an issue.

Main (default) news feed: Chronological Order - shows only the post your friends type up themselves.
Like/Share feed: Trending order - Shows all the like/share posts (that annoying click happy crap)
Game feed: Post involving Facebook games. I have no idea if chronological or trending is better here as I avoid gaming on Facebook completely.
Rating: 1 Votes
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xDENTALPLANx
19 months ago

Because Instagram/Facebook has data that shows that isn't good for users. The average Facebook user would have more than 1500 posts in their feed a day (and that was 3 years ago). No one can look at that much. What's why they have to surface the best posts using an algorithm.

They have piles of data showing that giving people a chronological feed, even when they think they want it, actually causes them to engage LESS. They get burnt out by 1000 posts by the same 2 people and don't bother to look at as much, don't engage as much, and don't come back as often. As much as you think you want that, the data proves you're wrong.

The data also shows that people are engaging more with the current setup. Despite what you believe, everything shows people like the current setup more than the old and giving them the option of the old one has no benefit for these social networks.


Whilst this is seemingly true, I also wonder how much of it comes down to the fact that they can also make more money off ads when using an algorithm - incentivising companies to pay to get their posts seen
Rating: 1 Votes
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