On Thursday, the Facebook-owned company unveiled the first major change to its app’s home screen in 10 years.
According to a new Facebook blog post, the new design gives its 15-second video feature Reels its own tab, and also adds a button dedicated to shopping.
The Reels tab is located where a “+” icon that people used to create a new post or Story used to be. That icon moves up to the top of the home page, along with the “heart” button where you check your activity, such as likes and follows. The “heart” button’s previous spot is replaced with the new “Shop” tab, and the direct messaging icon stays put.
“We haven’t updated Instagram’s home screen in a big way for quite a while. But how people create and enjoy culture has changed, and the biggest risk to Instagram is not that we change too fast, but that we don’t change and become irrelevant,” Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, said in a blog post.
With the changes, Instagram is making a big bet on the future of short-form video and online shopping, two categories it’s been investing in heavily, but hasn’t shared any metrics about, like how many people are actually using them.
Mosseri said the company will put ads in its TikTok competitor, Reels, and make it easier for users to browse for products to drive the company’s growing e-commerce business. Instagram takes a slice of each transaction for purchase made through the app. Mosseri said these changes are a necessary evolution of the app to keep up with the competition and to serve its users and creators, especially in light of the pandemic changing consumer behavior.
“It accelerated existing trends and accelerated the shift of shopping from offline to online; it’s increased the amount of demand there is for entertaining video out there,” he said.
The rollout of the redesign starts today.
