• No. Hiding likes is coming, it's obvious, right? It's in Australia, a bunch of other fucking countries, I don't remember, but it's going to happen. You're still going to be able to see your likes as you know. There's this thing people keep saying, I see on Twitter and in articles that this is going to hurt influencers or this is some reaction against influencers and that Instagram is doing this because they don't want influencers to be as popular? That's fucking crazy first of all. That makes absolutely no sense. That is no way, shape or form why Instagram is doing this.

    They're doing this so people post more. End of story. That's it. That's the only reason they're doing it, so people post more. The reason they're testing it is to see if that theory is correct. It's going to happen. That's it. It's going to happen. You can come and take my fucking job if it doesn't happen. It's going to happen. It's not going to hurt influencers at all.

    Now, it will be a little harder for brands to assess an influencers', like right of the bat, it will be harder for brands because they won't see the likes. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out because most brands are still finding influencers by just searching through Instagram. I don't know if they have a plan to release some platform for brands where they can get behind that and see the likes. I don't know if having a verified brand account maybe the brand will be able to see the likes and other people won't. I'm not sure exactly what they're going to do for that. I'm sure they will take care of it.

    For influencers, this is going to be amazing. Just because you can stand to publish some things that don't get a lot of engagement because you just want to publish them. I am really excited about it. Don't listen to anything that's like this is bad for influencers or some way this is a reaction against influencers. This is going to be great for our space, it's going to be great for influencers. I think it's going to make the platform more fun again, I think people will just enjoy posting more.

    Anyway, I see this stuff going around. I just want to talk about it because I think a lot of people write about this space without any understanding of it whatsoever. Instagram understands the power of influencers. They understand that you guys are the power users and while you're not driving a huge amount of the revenue and you're not driving a huge amount of the platform. Without influencers in the platform, it gets a lot less interesting. Think of it like Netflix. Does Netflix need to exist? Question. We're going to see.

    The question for Netflix long term is their original programming interesting enough to justify the cost of a subscription because they're losing friends, they're losing the office, they're losing all of these things. If you think about Instagram, it's like Netflix. You guys are on there, you are creating all this- think about Kim Kardashian, the big big people on the platform, if they all in mass left, that would be really bad for Instagram. They know that they need to- Kim Kardashian is Instagram's friends. It's not-- sure, in the grand scheme of things one or two or 10 or 1,000 accounts aren't that important. They know that if they lost that community who are their most ardent fans, biggest users all of that, it would probably be the beginning of a shift away from the platform.

    That's exactly what happened at Tumblr, is that Tumblr started losing a lot of interesting people to Instagram. They went and then their audiences went and then everyone was on Instagram was like, "Oh, this is better. I like this more." They just slowly stopped coming back to Tumblr and then it died. Instagram knows that. They're not going to do anything to try and fuck up what's going on. Right now they're literally printing money. They're just trying to keep staying competitive but not rock the boat too much. Hiding likes is going to be great. You guys are going to love it. Everyone get excited.
    Episode #158
    - Instagram Saves as a Metric, Editorial Content, Hiding Likes