This week’s theme should be called “shedding dead weight.” Instagram is removing and shifting around some traditional features that have outlived their usefulness, as well as letting you remove followers with inactive accounts. Facebook is removing the ability to follow profiles you aren’t connected to on Facebook. Sounds like we’re going to start 2025 by clearing out our social media!
1. Facebook is removing the option for followers on private profiles
Facebook realized that it isn’t a priority for non-creators to have followers and is now removing the option.
“When you follow someone, you see their posts in your Feed. You automatically follow people you’re friends with. You can also follow the posts of people you’re interested in. You can also choose to allow people who aren’t your friends to see your posts in their Feed.”
2. Instagram is moving Stories highlights
Stories will no longer take up as much real estate on Instagram profiles—they’re getting their own tab.
3. Instagram is helping users remove dead profiles from their followers
Cluttering up your followers with deactivated accounts can kill your engagement rate. Cleaning them up is generally nigh unto impossible, but Instagram is helping.
This could be helpful. Instagram is now displaying how many inactive profiles are among your followers, so that you can remove them from your audience if you prefer.
… when you tap through on your “Followers” listing from your IG profile, you’ll see a new category above the main list that shows “Deactivated accounts”, along with profiles that have been flagged for review, creator accounts, etc.
4. No more hashtag following on Instagram
Instagram’s hashtag following feature is going away, and it’s probably not going to be very missed. For years, users could follow hashtags and track topics and conversations. However, in recent years, the feature has become much less helpful.
From Digital Information World:
Over the years, spammers have exploited trending hashtags, attaching irrelevant or low-quality content to popular tags to gain exposure. Despite Instagram’s filtering tools, many users still reported seeing irrelevant posts in their feeds. This change will prevent hashtag spam from infiltrating the main feed, but users may still encounter it in Explore feeds and search results.
5. Threads is testing individual post analytics
Looks like Threads is giving Creators better tools to dive into their audience.
We’re testing changes to Insights on Threads, starting with metrics for individual posts. Now that your posts will be shown to more people who follow you, it’s especially important to understand what’s resonating with your existing audience.
From Threads:
“People in the test can sort posts by the highest or lowest number of views, likes, and replies. People in the test can also see the breakdown of views and interactions (likes, replies, reposts, and quotes) by followers and nonfollowers for a specific post, and the number of new follows that resulted from it.”
