Instagram Chief Flags Coming Changes to Profile Grid Displays

This could prompt a significant shift in your IG posting strategy.

As you may have noticed in the app, Instagram is currently testing a new vertical grid display on user profiles, which switches from the traditional square-shaped thumbnail images to longer stills in-stream.

As you can see in this example, posted by digital marketing expert Lindsey Gamble, some IG profiles already have this new, updated profile grid format, which better aligns with videos, especially, Reels, in formatting.   

In fact, it pretty much is the Reels grid, but translated to the main feed, with all of your posts set to be adapted over to this display.

And this, or a variation of it, is likely coming to all users soon, as explained by Instagram Chief Adam Mosseri in his most recent Q and A clip.

As per Mosseri:

“We’re actually testing a vertical grid, for those of you who haven’t seen it yet, for your profile, instead of squares. Now, squares are from way back in the day when you could only upload square photos to Instagram. And I know this can be annoying for some of you who really spend a lot of time curating and making sure everything lines up, but I would really like to do better by the content [creators of] today. And the vast majority of what is uploaded to Instagram today is vertical; it’s either 4:3 in a photo or 9:16 in a video, and cropping it down to a square is pretty brutal, so I’m hoping we can figure out a way to manage this transition.”

The update makes sense, as Mosseri notes, but again, it could change your entire approach to your IG profile presentation, and how you grab attention with your content in the app.

So it may be subtle, in that it simply makes your images rectangular, giving each panel more space in the grid. But the perceptual impact may be significant, while it could also increase user expectations around video content, as these longer images suggest video, based on traditional usage of the platform.

It’s one to watch either way, as Instagram is clearly going to be trying to re-align its platform around video content, in alignment with usage shifts.

So expect changes, and new approaches to posting as a result.