People are sharing less on Instagram, according to a new report
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People are posting fewer photos to Instagram than they did in the app's early days, according to The Information.
"Between 2013 and 2015, the number of photos shared on average by each Instagram user fell," the report notes, citing "two people briefed on the app’s internal data."
The decline in sharing doesn't mean that Instagram's overall popularity is slowing — the Facebook-owned app just crossed 500 million monthly users. But the trend does suggest that people are starting to share more from competing apps like Snapchat, which is used by 150 million people daily.
Instagram has been trying new tactics to encourage engagement, like sending a push notification when someone has "posted a photo for the first time in a while." Getting people to look at and comment on more photos was also one of the main reasons the app recently switched to an algorithmic feed.
"We’re thrilled with the continued strong growth and engagement of the Instagram community," Instagram told Tech Insider in a statement. "Our community has grown to more than 500 million Instagrammers, and 300 million use Instagram every single day, spending an average of more than 21 minutes each day in the app. We’re happy with the growth and enthusiasm we see for the products we’ve invested in over the past year, from Instagram Direct, Explore and Video to our creative apps like Boomerang and Layout.”
Back in April, reports said Facebook had seen a similar drop in "original sharing." This week Facebook coincidentally announced a change to its News Feed algorithm that prioritizes posts from friends over publishers.
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