Instagram Added A New Slideshow Feature, Here’s Why

You might have noticed a new option in your Instagram uploading options recently. There’s a new button that says “Select Multiple”.

Essentially, this now allows you to add up to 10 photos or videos in one post. They’ll all share one caption, set of comments, but users can swipe through them and see the other photos.

A few friends of mine noticed the change and while there was some initial interest in the new feature they all (including some people who make a living off of Instagram) eventually started to wonder why anyone would want to use such a feature.

Frankly, especially speaking about people using Instagram for work, why would you want to post multiple photos that most people wouldn’t know to even scroll through and won’t get extra exposure, engagement, etc.? I’m not sure you would. Unlike videos in the Facebook feed that get prioritized and the return (in the form of views and extra exposure) can outweigh the extra effort, Instagram slideshows don’t seem to have any good justification.

So why did Instagram do this from a busines perspective, if it’s not to warrant users to use it for more engagement/stay longer on the platform/etc.?

It has everything to do with advertising.

When you are selecting the format of ads in Facebook ads, there is one format that Facebook recommends for it’s superior engagement and click-through rate. It’s called a Carousel looks like this:

Look familiar?

Well, if you don’t know Facebook owns Instagram, and actually, when you create an ad in Facebook Ad Manager, it creates a version for Instagram for you. So if your best performing add on Facebook uses a slideshow to introduce products, maybe you should allow users to be able to make the same slideshow to get them used to swiping through the format? Just a theory.