Rumour has it that Instagram is removing the number of likes a post receives to users. Is the world ending for the ones that make a living online? What does it all mean for the influencers and digital marketers of the world?

In a leaked design prototype, Instagram is currently testing a version of their app that will remove all Instagram likes to everyone but the original poster. “We want your followers to focus on what you share, not how many likes your posts get. During this test, only the person who shares a post will see the total number of likes it gets.” Pages and posts that get a lot of likes will naturally grab other users’ attention – there has to be a reason that so many people like a picture, right?

But the obsessive monitoring of Like counts can steer users into posting content that is less authentic, less meaningful to them, and more geared towards a high school-esque popularity contest. Here’s a look at a design mockup for the no-Like look: (image courtesy of TechCrunch)

Instagram stated that this small change could positively influence user well-being by reducing the fixation and anxiety that people can get on getting the most likes on an image.
But what does it mean for those that make a living off of the platform? While Instagram Likes are arguably a vanity metric that isn’t actually indicative of good business performance, both digital marketers and influencers alike rely on Likes for their social proof. These vanity metrics, such as Instagram Likes or Facebook fans, are designed to impress, but they don’t automatically mean that an Instagram campaign is successful.

So, will Instagram removing their likes drastically change how we do marketing?

The removal of public likes will place much more emphasis on follower counts and comments, as they’ll be the only ways of publicly measuring engagement. However, the principle of content creation will remain the same.
Instagram’s algorithm will continue to use how many Likes an image receives to influence the images that show up at the top of users’ feeds, so marketers and influencers will still need to produce content that is relevant and interesting for their respective audiences.

By improving the user experience of the app, Instagram hopes that this Like removal will result in more frequent and authentic posts from its immense user base.

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